President can’t impose national minimum wage figure –Adeyemi, NASU general secretary

By Bimbola Oyesola, bimbeechampion@yahoo.com

As Nigerian workers await the outcome of the new national minimum wage negotiations after the tripartite committee would have concluded its work, a top member of the organised labour movement, Peters Adeyemi, general secretary of the Non-Academic Staff Union of Educational and Associated Institutions (NASU), has cautioned that it is out of order for the presidency to determine the figure of the new wage.

In this interview with Daily Sun at the just concluded International Labour Conference (ILC) in Geneva, Switzerland, Adeyemi, who doubles as the vice-president for Africa and Arab nations, Public Service International (PSI), noted that Nigeria’s President may influence the negotiations from behind the scenes, however, “the final decision is not his to make.”

He expressed concern over the governors’ attitude to the negotiation for the new wage, calling for a law to compel the governors to pay the minimum wage as far as they were part of the process that led to the outcome of the new wage.

The versatile labour leader also warned that any attempt to outlaw strike would be an effort in futility as long as injustice persists by those in government and employers.

Adeyemi spoke further on the advocacy of PSI across the world, the efforts of the International Labour Organization (ILO) to ensure compliance with standards across the globe, Nigeria’s democracy and other issues of national interest.

Excerpts:

Waiting for minimum wage

It is very clear that the government is very insensitive as far as the issues of workers are concerned and I think the governors are strengthening the arms of the President.

The President will now say that the government wanted to do more than we have done based on the reactions of the two labour centres, but the governors may not be able to meet up.

Honestly, until there is a way we can confront the governors, the efforts to have the minimum wage will continue to end up in futility.

I think that the two labor centres have not done enough to hold those state governors responsible. Because, even as we speak, there are governors who are not even paying the N30,000 minimum wage.

And they are giving different types of excuses why they cannot pay. Tell me, how on earth will they pay 60,000? Minimum wage is not supposed to be about federal workers alone, it should be something that cuts across.

I agree with all the research, analysis about cost of living and all, that is what we do each time we go for the tripartite meetings. We have to factor the cost of rice, tomatoes, and all that, add them together before arriving at a figure. All this is fine, but what have we achieved from that? Because at the end of the day, all of those things put together do not give us the minimum wage. Again, even with the presence of the governors from the six geopolitical zones, sitting on the tripartite committee, they have not been able to convince their colleagues to pay. Are we not supposed to have a law to compel the governors to pay the minimum wage? As far as they were part of the process that led to the outcome, if we do not do that, we would continue to waste our time and Nigerian workers would be the ones to suffer for it.

The only solution, if you ask me, is to shut down the states, take them one after the other, mobilize a number of Nigerian workers to stand ground and shut down those states until they agree. It will take some time, but it would yield result. Even if we are unable to do it in the four-year tenure of a sitting NLC president, we would have covered substantial areas.

Unfortunately, we in the movement are aiding the state governors in this act of exploitation. How do you justify a situation where subsidy has been removed and you are benefitting substantially? State governors do not have a problem of money now. The problem they have is how to steal the money. Yet the workers are languishing in abject poverty.

Does it not make sense that, even the President gave that announcement, he would have worked out some solutions to ameliorate the effect of the hardship, carry the governors along and get them committed? It is easy to do because the ruling party has more states and he could put them in perpetuation of governance. Because, if they do those things and the states owned by the opposition do not do it, they will wake the wrath of the people.

The truth is that there is nobody, except the thieves in government, that is not feeling the impact of the economic madness in the country today.

The right amount for the new wage

I cannot give you my personal opinion because it would destroy the work of the NLC. The figure that should be national minimum wage is not supposed to be whatever the President imposes.

The figure should come from the tripartite committee. The President may influence the negotiations from underground, however, the final decision is not his to make.

The moment the President imposes a figure, then we can go for the funeral of the tripartite because it means that the President can just sleep and wake up and pronounce any figure. That mentality is already on and it has destroyed labour’s efforts to conduct research and fight for the interests of workers.

June 12 struggle

It is heart-warming, and the fact that we are celebrating Democracy Day in Nigeria is also something that is very significant. Do not forget that June 12 remained a watershed as far as the democratic experience in Nigeria is concerned. When you want to talk about the role labour played, it is a very, very significant role in the struggle for the actualization of June 12.

Don’t also forget about the fact that the late Comrade Kokori played a prominent role in that struggle and the labour movement itself.

And so there’s no way you can write anything about June 12 without significantly taking on board the massive role the labour movement played.

And I think that is why it remains painful that, up to now, labour doesn’t seem to have benefited at the level that we expected from the outcome, because politicians ultimately benefited from that struggle. And if you look at the situation of Nigerian workers right now, it’s really nothing to be happy about.

I think that what we have gotten from that democratic struggle, June 12, has not been commensurate with the struggle we put into it. There are a lot of people who have turned into politicians to benefit from that massive struggle without playing a single role; today they are eating fat.

But labour worked so hard, however, today, Nigerian workers are living from hand to mouth. It is very unfortunate. For me, as a labour leader, I do not think that there is anything much to say about this. Politicians can be celebrating, but for us it is not right. At this moment, Nigerian workers don’t have anything to say about it. Even though it is heartwarming that we are still practicing democracy in our country, I think we have tried as much as possible to keep the soldiers in their barracks, but I think that was the result of the resilience of Nigerian workers. That the military have not made any attempt to say they are coming back is because Nigerian workers have been able to endure, and are still enduring, from the massive pain that the political elite are inflicting on Nigerian workers. It’s very, very unfortunate.

ILC Committee of Standards procedure

This year, the 112th International Labour Conference Committee on Application of Standards received 24 complaints from different countries. Some of them, you know, have to do with freedom of association, child labour, collective bargaining, and a whole lot of them. We have six complaints from six African countries.

We have from Uganda, we have from Guinea, and we have from a few other countries. Nevertheless, I have participated actively right from the beginning. We have from other parts of the world, Cambodia and most of these complaints centred around comments of these countries being very insensitive. Some of them were opposing trade union rights and outright abuse of these rights.

We have refusal for children to survive, freedom of association, collective bargaining and a whole lot of others. To me, there is not any case that you can refer to as a star case or a very, very controversial case like we used to have in some time when we called for the IOC, a case that would be the talk of town, that everybody would be massively involved in the presentation.

But it has been a very wonderful experience, and you have the tripartite, the government, the workers and the employers.

Power of ILO

Even the director-general (DG) spoke about this at the workers’ group meeting on Monday. The fact that, unfortunately, the wrong perception of quite a number of labour leaders across the group about the fact that the ILO has the power to sanction government.

The DG spoke extensively on that, that the law that established the ILO does not give you that power to just sanction the country. Rather, there will be these persuasive measures of ensuring that they do not use force. And that is why most of the work of the Committee on Application of Standards will have various steps that are taken. Some is to send commissions, some is to send technical committee to those countries where you have problem. And the job of those countries will not be about order, but rather it will be about persuasion to get some of those countries to the line of normality.

However, I think something that is very significant which we must talk about is that quite a number of countries do not even want them reported the ILO. Therefore, the fact that the ILO is there also serves to a large extent as check on the activities of those countries. I believe, by and large, ILO has succeeded substantially in the way it has conducted its affairs.

And I also think that the bulk of how successful we are will be dependent on how the trade union itself is able to manoeuver its role within their various countries. Nevertheless, clearly, the ILO has played a very significant role because the fact that politically, it has some damaging effect when you say the trade union has taken either the employer or the government to the Committee on Application of Standards. And at that level, the country will be highlighted, the country will be debated, the country will be discussed; in some cases, discussed negatively. And that discussing the government in blacklight at the global level, some very hard words are used and so, quite a number of countries that ratified various conventions are sensitive to the fact that they do not want to be so badly highlighted at the level of this global organization now.

The right to strike

It is very simple and straightforward, for as long as injustice persist, for as long as this insensitivity persists by those in government and the employer, so long shall the trade union continue to go on strike. This debate has been on, even at the level of the ILO, for a while, and there has been a gang-up of government and employers wanting to outlaw strike.

But I tell you that it is going to be an effort in futility. For as long as this persists, for as long as employers of people, either you are in the private sector or you are in the public sector, continue to, with impunity, deny workers their right to fair living wage, fair working environment, and all the rest of it, strike wil continue.

Any effort to outlaw strike will be an effort in futility. It is like making a law that you would not implement. And in trying to suppress strike, they are also expanding their act of injustice, insensitivity and their refusal to allow workers to survive. They are trying to remove the only potent weapon that the trade union uses to assert its rights.

The only fair way you can moderate or reduce strike is by ensuring that workers are fairly paid, their working conditions are just, fair and equitable and they are allowed to work without discrimination.

PSI advocacy

Public Service International remains one of the most outspoken and visible global trade union organizations in our public services across the length and breadth of the globe. And we know that today there is an onslaught on the public service about the fact that government has no business in public. That is something that has been on for long. So, virtually every public service utilities are being privatized, whether it is water, education, and what have you.

So, that traits continue because our political elites are no longer interested in governance. Therefore, they want to contract out all the basic services. You go, you campaign, and you tell people that you will provide education; you say you will provide electricity and water, you will do everything.

And immediately, you get into government, you begin the process of privatizing those key utilities that will make life easy for the working people. So, PSI taking into the fact that political elites are becoming more lazy and unwilling to run government based on promises delivered during election is also stepping up its activities. We are also drawing from the message of the fact that some of those privatisation that have been done in a number of countries globally have not worked. For example, what we have in Uganda where they privatized the electricity and today that privatization has collapsed and the government of Uganda is now going back to making the electricity to be owned by the government.

So, if we have quite a number of research outcomes that have shown clearly that in some of the countries where some of these key social facilities have been privatized they have failed woefully and then they are now reluctantly returning to what they said was not possible. How can you then in a fair sense of judgment say that government will have no business. It doesn’t sounds credible to me.

You can have a situation where you have private investor that have maybe like 49 percent share in that business, but you must maintain a situation whereby the government owns a percentage of ownership so that people, private individuals will not milk the public, the ordinary citizens of the country to death. You have seen what is happening in Nigeria today.

Taking over electricity sector in Nigeria

That has been the war that Joe Ajaero have fought. The position of the trade union, including those in the electricity sector, is that it is fraudulent to sell this electricity to private individuals. The case that we have seen clearly with the privatization of electricity in Nigeria is that when all those things were privatized, government went through the backdoor to spend money aiding those private investors. Where have you seen that? It is fraudulent. Clearly fraudulent.

One thing I have observed as a trade union person is that government is always ashamed to go back on their policies. This privatization policy in the electricity sector, Joe Ajaero and the people in the electricity union have been vindicated. They said it clearly that it will not work. 10-15 years after, it has collapsed completely. Are you not amazed about the every day report that the national grid has collapsed.

Also, when you talk about this classification into Bands and all that…. It is all fraudulent. It is a clear attempt of robbing Peter to pay Paul. You divert all the electricity/energy to one sector where you think it is meant for the highly placed and deny the poor people.

Then you come sarcastically to come and talk about they pay more. How does that make sense? It makes more sense for you to distribute evenly and charge accordingly.