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by Bimbola Oyesola , [email protected]
With the state of the economy, Nigerian workers are no doubt at the receiving end of the harsh situation in the country. But the president of the National Union of Chemical, Footwear, Rubber, Leather and Non-Metallic Products Employees (NUCFLRANMPE), Goke Olatunji, believes that this is the time that unions and organised labour as a whole must rise up to provide succour and support for their members.
Though the national minimum wage still stands at N30,000, Olatunji, in this interview, stated that workers in the chemical sector earned N73,000 and more as minimum wage, through the effort of the union.
He spoke on the diversification drive of the union, the challenges in the sector and other national issues threatening the survival of the companies in the sector.
Excerpts:
Workers’ rights
In terms of fighting for the rights of our workers when their rights have been infringed or trampled upon by the employers, we do this often. The media were around when we shut down Nycil for two weeks. How can a management just woke up one day and locked our members out without any prior information. At the end of the day we settled and today both parties have a very cordial relationship. In some other areas too, perhaps in terms of education. We educate our members, we organise workshops for our members at the branches, zones and national. As far as our union is concerned, learning is a continuous process, we have education and research department that is saddled with that responsibility.
A good union’s responsibility is to defend members’ welfare. When we talk of defending the rights of our members and taking care of their welfare, we have something we called NJIC. The last one was signed last year’s April and we do that every two years. Our basic salary now, that’s our own industry’s minimum wage is N73,000 and that does not mean branches that are doing well cannot pay more. We encourage them to pay more than the minimum wage. Some branches do negotiate in-house, but that is not official, it is just within the branch and we are not against it. The minimum wage that Unilever pay is not the same with PZ, it’s not the same as Vitafoam. All this serves as an encouragement for the workers.
Challenges
There is no doubt that the situation in the country is not palatable in all the sectors, but in our sector we have done our best. With the situation today in the country, all the unions are complaining, but we stand to be counted among the best. There are some presently celebrating casuals. There are difference between casuals, contract staff, outsourcing and regular staff, but we are one of the leading sector in the country that is fighting against casualisation. Outsourcing, contract staff has to do with a third party organisation. The management have outsourced the jobs to a third party organisation. Hence we ensure that the management must give us access to the contractors to enable us organise the workers because as far as we are concerned, workers irrespective of whatever name you called them, they are workers and we should be able to speak for them and fight for their rights when such is trampled upon by employers.
However, one of our challenges is the reduction in the numbers of our membership. This is because lots of companies in our sector are moving to a neighbouring countries. Some reduces their staffs and all these affected our membership and the strength of the union. Of course, this reduces our check off dues. Everybody is being affected and the situation is not palatable for anybody.
Industrial conflict
Resolving conflict is a sine qua non to organizational survival and as such should be carefully accorded priority required of it. The strategy, principle, process and practice must carefully be examined with a view to ensuring healthy conflict resolution without bias or prejudices. Externalizing industrial conflict had consequences for both employers and employees. We advise that parties should endeavour to settle internally. Issues that could lead to industrial conflict, included retrenchment of workers due to factory closure, lay-off, discharge or dismissal; denial of benefits or an award to a worker, non-payment of personal allowances to seasonal employees, and the demand of employees for medical relief; lock out and claim for damages and Problems relating to gratuity, National Housing Fund, pension fund and allowances. Employees should strive to avoid industrial conflict among others. Collective bargaining machinery must be properly utilized; Proper training and development; leadership by example
Women’s participation
We encourage our women to take up leadership responsibility and we do this through training and workshops. In the history of this union, we have not had the number of women we have now at the leadership. In the Central Working Committee, we have two women, the national auditor and the ex-officio. At the National executive council, we also have two, the chairpersons of West Area council and the North East area council. These are the little things we have done to encourage our members. It is true the economy is not good, it affects us too. But we believe that in as much as we are still existing, we must try our best.
Projects
We recently unveiled a multi-million naira hotel project. I sat down with my executives and we decided there is need for us to do more on diversification. That, we should not depend only on check off dues and that we should look for another way to generate income for the union. That was how the idea of the new hotel came up. I then appealed to the central working committee to give me an approval that every month, whatever we gathered through the check off dues, should go into the project. So that was how we started and to God be the Glory we completed the project late last year and it was unveiled by the NLC President. As it is now, we have recruited some staff and the hotel is now in operation. So whatever comes in will be part of our income. Actually our guest house was conceived to take care of our members coming from the outstations. Anytime they visit the secretariat on official duties, we lodged them at hotels, but with our guests house, we will be able to cut down on such expenses.
The same goes for our shopping mall, the last regime of Comrade Boniface Isok did the first floor, but when I came, I did the second and the last floor and the roofing which we did with iron steel.
What remains now is the finishing. Our members are really working hard to ensure completion of the project.
We conceptualized the shopping malls, with event centre as means of generating income for the union. Already people have started making enquiry about it, but we told them to allow us to complete it.
It is not that government is not coming up with good policies, but the major problem is the implementation. All hands must be on deck to make things works. Policy inconsistency is another problem, government should come out with a policy that will encourage foreign investors. This is very important for us to move forward as a nation. We want government to take issue of security seriously.
Government’s policy
There is nowhere that is secure in Nigeria as at today, and no foreign company will want to invest in a place that is not secured. Government, most especially the incoming government must address this. Also government must chose the right people for every positions. Government must go for the technocrat. Am also emphasizing it that the next government must put the right peg into the right hole. Any government official that is not ready to work should be removed.
Fuel Subsidy
As at today when government have not removed fuel subsidy, we are buying a litre of petrol for around N300, if they now remove the subsidy that means we will be buying between N750 and N1,000.
How do you want a common Nigerian to survive? How much is the price of gas now? From N200 to about N800 per liter, where do we go from here. We must not forget that we are the one producing this fuel. As a body, we will not support removal of fuel subsidy, that is if there is anything like subsidy anyway. There is no future the way this country is going now because you can see all our youths are now going abroad for greener pastures. Those in the country are committing all manners of crime in order to be rich.
Adequate Organising
Our plan now is to intensify more efforts in the area of organising. Our sector experienced a lot of closure and redundancy, but we equally have some new companies coming up. During the COVID-19 pandemic, a lot of our companies were shut down and were paying salary to their workers. This has effect on their profit margin. No production, no sales. We, as a union cannot demand for anything for our members during those period. There are some benefits, that workers enjoyed when they go to work, like free lunch, overtime, company products and the rest, all those were stopped. But we thank God that we have surmounted that now. The pandemic really dealt with us. As of today, we cannot count more than 300 companies in our industry nationwide and before we have over 500, 600. Some of them could not come back. We have some relocating outside Nigeria to neighbouring countries like Ghana, Sierra leone. Companies like Michelin, Dunlop and others.
However we have been able to organise more companies and that is why we are still standing and I will say overcoming our challenges gradually.
Trainings
In 1991, under the leadership of Comrade Damulak, we picked some of our area council leaders to go to University of Ibadan for some programmes. The leadership believed that it could be arranged annually and initially contracted it out, but later we took it up and continued to organise it. We have seen the benefits of continuous education of our members because it makes them to stand in better position when dealing with the employers. It also lessen the burden on the leadership as they know what to do in their respective branches. So we have less crisis in our hands. Through the training we have been able to develop more of our members, who have gone ahead to hold managerial positions in their places of work. For example one of our facilitators, in our training last year was our former branch Secretary, but now he is the group human resource manager of the company. He has developed himself and we have so many of them like that.
