•As Congress, ASC train state councils on organising

By Victor Ahiuma-Young

“Any trade union that therefore refuses to organise has decided to fail and ultimately die. We organise to build power. It is with organising that trade unions build both our solidarities – the organic solidarity and the wide and inclusive solidarity.”

This was the thrust of the presentation by the President of the Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC, Joe Ajaero, at the opening ceremony of the 2023 Organising Academy (South) for state councils’ leaders of NLC.

The four-day training programme in Lagos, supported by the American Solidarity Centre, ASC, would end today.

Addressing the participants, Ajaero who was represented by the Deputy President of Congress and President-General of the Maritime Workers Union of Nigeria, MWUN, Prince Adewale Adeyanju, noted that “Organising is at the heart of every trade union struggle. Any trade union that therefore refuses to organise has decided to fail and ultimately die. We organise to build power. It is with organising that trade unions build both of our solidarities – the organic solidarity and the wide and inclusive solidarity. It is with this that we build our strength which is critical tool we use in engaging our social partners.”

“Without building power through organising, we become powerless thus ineffective in our various engagements and unable to deliver benefits to our publics especially our primary constituency who look up to us for the defence of their rights and privileges. A union that has stopped organising is a union that has ceased to exist because organising is the heartbeat of all trade unions without exception.

“Across the nation, reports kept pouring in of workers deprived and denied of their basic rights and sometimes denied of their rights to fair and living wages. Governments at various levels owe salaries sometimes up to one year and when they manage to pay one month, they applaud themselves openly believing that the payment of earned income to workers is charity extended to workers.

“This Organising Academy that begins today gives us the fitting opportunity to confront this raging monster. It is going to help us build the needed solidarities thus power which we can mobilise to effectively interrogate all the forces of retrogression and oppression that confronts us both as workers and as a people. This is will equip us with the necessary tools to engage most of the issues that concern the quest to reach the un-reached workplaces so that our hands of protection can stretch to majority of the workers and workplaces existing in the country to ensure that Decent work deficits are drastically reduced in our country.

“Every union is an organising platform. Every trade union leader and member is an organiser. Every trade union activity is organising focused. If Organising is therefore the life wire of what we do as trade unions, then, we must all seek to imbibe the lessons that would come out of this to equip ourselves with the organising tasks that confronts us at all times.

Corroborating, NLC General Secretary, Emma Ugboaja, warned that some union are going into extinction because of failure to organise, lamenting that some union leaders prefer to be a big fish in a small well

According to him, trade union is about numbers and called for merger of smaller unions to form a formidable union capable of fighting and defending workers rights.

Merger is the only way unions can confront big capital.

He said 80 percent of the workforce is outside the union cover because they are unorganised, stressing that this category of workers needs to be organised

In his remarks, Country Programme Director of ASC for West Africa, Sonny Ogbuehi, said among others that employers are becoming more sophisticated and unions must strive to be ahead of them to stay relevant.

According to him, Union busting is a huge industry in the US and Union’s busters are heavily paid. They know how to bust or break union. These union busters are already creeping into Nigeria. It is therefore our aim that among others, at the end of these training, labour leaders should be able to use the knowledge acquired to bring more workers into the trade union cover and protection.