BY VICTOR AHIUMA-YOUNG

IN time past, aggrieved workers, pensioners and even jobless Nigerians trouped to Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC, and Trade Union Congress of Nigeria, TUC, offices across the country, to seek for redress and intervention in their plight. Redress and intervention they were getting that employers were not only thinking twice before victimizing workers, they were indeed afraid to victimize workers because the fear of labour was the beginning of wisdom for employers perceived as anti-labour.

But today, the reverse is the case. Victimized, abused workers, even their loved ones in case of deceased workers have nowhere to go as organized labour appears to have  practically abandoned the Nigerian workers to their fate.

On May 1, six days from today, Nigerian workers will join their counterparts in the rest of the World, besides the United States of America, USA, to celebrate the May Day, also known as the Workers’ Day. Is there anything to really celebrate?

Policies and practices perceived as unfair to labour now pervade most workplaces in Nigeria. While permanent jobs are not only disappearing in frightening Manner in the Petroleum, financial, manufacturing, construction among other sectors of the economy, casual, contract, outsourced workers and other forms of non-pensionable employment have replaced permanent and pensionable jobs. The sad thing is that even in public sector where hitherto jobs were considered permanent, in the name of reforms and failure of government to perform its constitutional roles, has imbibed the evils of casualisation of workers. It is now a common knowledge that employers engage casual workers or whatever name called, with impunity. Though labour law says no employer should engage any worker for more than six months maximum as casual, employers only obey the law in breach.

In the manufacturing sector, no big employer can boast of not having over 1000 casual workers in the company’s payroll. In fact, Labour Vanguard’s findings revealed that the bigger the employer, the higher the number of casual workers who have spent between a year and 10 years directly employed by the affected company, that is, not through labour contractor. The most daring and lawless employers in Nigeria today are those of Asian origin; the Chinese, the Indians and the Lebanese (known as the Koras).

Armchair labour leaders
The most frustrating and even annoying aspect of it, is that labour leaders have not only gone on recess or slumber, but have become armchair unionists who sit in the comfort of their offices, collect the dwindling check-off dues and spend such with frivolities without servicing the source of the dues. Though all the unions or associations as the case maybe, have departments or units headed by organizing secretary or any other name called, they organise every other thing except workers.  While employers brazenly casualise and retrench workers with ease and in most cases, without following due process, labour leaders have become reactionaries. Some have perfected the art of negotiating union members out of jobs even with ridiculous terminal benefits, while others will not even know what is happening to their due paying members until they are sacked with employers being the only determinant of workers’ final benefits.

In the financial sector for instance, Labour Vanguard’s check, revealed that the industry based collected agreement between organised labour and employers, was done in 2005 and when it was due for a review two years later, the employers refused to negotiate, claiming they had not formed a quorum. Till today, it is either the employers’ body; the Nigeria Employers Association of Banks, Insurance and Allied Institutions, NEABIAI, has ceased to exist or simply lacks the power to negotiate.  The unions, the National Union of Banks, Insurance and Financial Employees, NUBIFIE, and its Association of Senior Staff of Banks, Insurance and Financial Institutions, ASSBIFI, or both NLC and TUC that they are affiliated to have no political will to compel the employers both individually or collectively to come to the table for negotiation.

During the last National Delegates Conference of NLC in March, 2011, President of NLC, Comrade Abdulwaheed Omar, in his speech, declared “Labour Movement has been alive to its responsibilities and lived up to expectations, the fact is that it needs transformation into an efficient fighting force that will hold employers and government accountable under the constitution, our laws and international conventions. We need to build a new Labour that will be proactive rather than tail events and that can serve as a catalyst in national transformation. Towards this end, Congress will in the next four years -concentrate on organising and mobilizing, collective bargaining, assisting unions to build capacity and tackling the challenges of casualisation and violation of workers’ rights.  Those were promising and encouraging words for workers, both union members and prospective ones. But looking back today, has labour lived but to those promises?  Keep the answer to yourself.

Declining labour power
Lamenting the declining power of organised labour, a renowned industrial relations practitioners and Group Deputy Managing Director, Kewalram Chanrai Group, Mr. Victor Eburajolo, argued that non-conventional forms of employment such as outsourcing and contract staffing were now in vogue and urged organised labour in the country to catch up with the trend in their own interest.

According to him: “Today, across the world, outsourcing is the in-thing. I said in Michael Imoudu National Institute of Labour Studies, MINILS, two years ago that I expect the labour unions to get these outsourced workers in every industry organized. You are looking at the main union, but the membership of the union is dwindling.  Most of the people in the place of work are outsourced. What have you done? Can’t you unionize those workers? Since then they have not done anything. Their check-off is getting smaller, and government and private employers are getting stronger. So they (unions) are getting weaker.”

Loss of credibility

He expressed sadness that the situation had degenerated to the extent that  unions were now busy fighting themselves while employers and government were getting  stronger and stronger even as the unions continued losing credibility in the eyes of observers due to inconsistency in management of disputes with government or employers.

There is no doubt that Eburajolo spoke the minds of most Nigerians especially in the wake of the controversial circumstances that led to the termination of anti-fuel hike protest in January 2011 and the aborted April 10, 2013 one day national protest in solidarity with pensioners over their plight.

That a one day protest was called off before it  even commenced because of a purported agreement with a government that has penchant for reneging on agreements is not only very surprising, but against labour tradition.  When next labour calls out workers and Nigerians for a protest, it is definitely going to be a hard sell. Years after the N18.000 new minimum wage was signed into law, labour has not been able to ensure its full compliance in all the states and workplaces. You hear occasional barks, but no bite.