By VICTOR AHIUMA-YOUNG
President of NUFBTE, Comrade Lateef Oyelekan, in an interface with Labour Vanguard, spoke of the efforts at rebuilding the union after years of internal crisis that almost destroyed it.

Our score card

Our executive can be regarded as a product of reconciliation because before our emergence, the union was factionalised. It was by the grace of God that we survived the crisis that almost destroyed the union. By the grace God, we will never passed through that road again.  If you see our executive, it was designed by God that every interest was represented and since then, we have continued to work as one. I tell you, the union has been better for it.

*Lateef Oyelekan

From the very first year, because we are a team with a vision and purpose, we went into real business.  We decided to make a difference and set enduring legacies.

At the beginning, we decided to renovate our national secretariat to give it a facelift befitting the union. After that, we brainstormed and decided to expand the revenue base of the union.  If you look round because of the harsh economic environment and the global recession, redundancies and unfair labour practices especially, casualisation of workers has become rampant.

The end result is that our membership keeps  decreasing. The impact of it is that our revenue through the check-off dues is also reducing very fast for obvious reason of loss of members and employers refusing to allow workers to join union.  To ensure the union has other sources of revenue, we decided to embark on some projects that we reasoned will generate funds for union.

So, between 2008 and 2009, we constructed a two-storey Multi-purpose Hall and set up a Solidarity Infinity Ventures Limited.  The multi-purpose hall contains two events air-conditioned hall with a minimum of 500 seating capacity each and an open-relaxation centre with 300 seating capacity.

For the Solidarity Infinity Ventures limited, it came out of the former Labour Bread warehouse. We converted it into full fledged wholesale and retail stores for the benefit of our members and the general public. There products from our employers are sold there  at affordable prices.

The place is a major distributor of our member companies’ products. We have also constructed special cold room to provide cooling facility for users of the Multi-purpose hall and ice block is produced daily from the cold room and sold to members of the public.  By the grace of God, these projects have gradually been generating additional revenue for our union.

As part of the expansion of our revenue base, since May 2010, we began the construction of NUBTFE HOTEL and SUITE.  As we speak, the project has reached the finishing stage. It is a 3-storey building of 44 Rooms and 6 Suites with lift. There are two bars for in-house and the public and a modern restaurant.

It is expected that on completion the Hotel will offer job opportunities for over 100 direct and indirect persons.  We have equally acquired two landed properties besides the hotel for the second phase of the project. While we have fully paid for one of the properties, N5million deposit has been paid for the other.

Education, training

Our leadership has realized that we can achieve a lot both as a union and as individuals through education and training. In fact, we are rebuilding our union through education. It is the belief of our leadership that a worker or leader’s performance, status in life can be enhanced by the level of education, training and capacity building such a worker is exposed to.

We have decided to take every opportunity available to us as unionists and workers to improve the level of training of our members. So, to ensure that we improve the capacity of leaders of the union and shop floor workers, we have taken the issue of education and training in the union very serious.

For the first time in the history of our union, over 70 percent of National Administrative Council, NAC members have enjoyed oversea training especially in USA, and Russia, in addition to the International Labour Organisation, ILO’s yearly Conference in Switzerland.

As at today, over 30 percent of our women have traveled to some West African countries for training.  We are in the process of concluding arrangement for 6 of our women to travel to the USA for training. To adequately prepare our Gender Desk, the gender desk officer was in Italy for two weeks training and we are similarly finalizing preparation for her to, in May, travel to USA for another two weeks training.

Similarly, not less than 30 percent of our State Chairmen and Secretaries have attended the yearly Hamattan and Rain school training programmes organized by the Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC.

Besides, our union is affiliated to the International Union of Food, IUF, Switzerland, World Federation of Trade Unions, WFTU, Athens, and we also affiliated to UNIGLOBAL, also in Switzerland. In the same vein, we are in partnership with the National Labour College, Maryland, Washington DC, for us to send about 20 of our members annually for training.