Shell dangles bonus to its staff in bid to secure exit approval

• Oil dealer offers three months salary as take away to try and dissuade its employees from seeking redress and with the hope that process will be finalised by August this year

Shell has offered an improved transitional bonus to employees as it seeks to exit Africa.

In a move read as meant to contain and counter the potentially contagious impact of Kenya employees’ moving to the Industrial Court to bloc the sale of its assets, it is offering the equivalent of three months salary as bonus.

Details of the payout, it hopes, would be finalised by August of this year.

A circular seen by Saturday Nation signed by Shell Oil Products Africa executive vice president Xavier le Mintier says: “Transitional bonuses in Shell are rare but where they have been paid, they have been in the range of one to one-and-a-half months’ pensionable base salary.”

The oil transnational is in the process of negotiating sale of part of its equity to Dutch oil trader Vitol and private equity player Helios. But the operations will retain its brand name.

Sources, who cannot be named without compromising their position in the tussle, said employees had been caught flat-footed by the revelation that Shell was not entirely pulling out.

That has scuttled their basis of heading to the Industrial Court where they obtained a stop order. Previous reports quoting Oilibya officials had indicated the Libyan firm was in the running for a takeover.

However, the Kenya employees are still understood to be digging in for better payout as the firm’s main shareholder changes.

“The bonus will be payable only on the completion (handover) date of each country,” says the circular. Clearly, this is meant to dull the enthusiasm of those taking legal action against the Dutch transnational.

Shell is set to retain a minority stake, seen as a stepping-stone for eventual total withdrawal. The firm is seeking to get out of the downstream market on the continent.

The circular seems to be foreseeing resistance.

“I am asking individual managers to engage staff in their locations to ensure everyone has a good understanding of what is being proposed, and expect that final arrangements in each country will be available by August.”

What might encourage the employees is the fact that both the firms Shell is negotiating with have no downstream structures likely to result in redundancies.