UNION INVOLVEMENT AND WORKPLACE SAFETY OF OIL FIRMS IN RIVERS STATE.

Abstract

This research looked at oil companies' worker safety and union participation in Rivers State, Nigeria. The study's goals were to find out how advocacy and physical safety are related, how conflict resolution and psychological safety are related, and how lobbying and environmental safety of Rivers State's oil companies are related. The Systems Theory of Industrial Relations served as the study's foundation. The study design used was correlational. Due to the modest size of the population—198 management employees from 22 oil service companies in Rivers State—a census sample approach was used. A systematic questionnaire was used to collect the data, and 187 copies, or 94.4% of the total, were successfully recovered and examined. The data was analyzed using Spearman's rank order correlation. The findings showed that there was a statistically significant, somewhat favorable link between physical safety and advocacy. Additionally, there was a moderate, positive, and statistically significant correlation between lobbying and environmental safety and a high, positive, and statistically significant correlation between psychological safety and conflict settlement. The results highlight the importance of active lobbying, credible conflict settlement, and successful union representation in enhancing safety outcomes in the oil industry. The research comes to the conclusion that union membership has a major impact on worker safety in Rivers State's oil companies. Among other things, it was suggested that in order to maintain and enhance worker psychological safety, unions and management in oil companies should set up more precise deadlines and conflict resolution procedures.