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By Bimbola Oyesola
For the President of the National Union of Chemical Footwear Rubber Leather and Non Metallic Products Employees (NUCFRLANMPE), Goke Olatunji when the roll call of unions that set the pace in the country are called, his union will ranked among the best.
In this interview Olatunji who has been a leader of repute in his union explained that members’ welfare ought to be of top priority for the leadership of a union as they are the reason for the existence of the union.
He speaks further on what the union has been doing differently, which include organising, training, fighting for the members rights, including diversifying into business.
Excerpts:
Success story
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.
Workers Rights
In terms of fighting for the rights of our workers when their rights have been infringed 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 organised workshops for our members at the branches, zones. To us learning is a continuous process, we have education and research department that is saddled with that responsibility.
Equally, 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 2. These are the little things we have done to encourage our members. It’s 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.
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 this 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’s why we are still standing and I will say overcoming our challenges gradually.
Achievement
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. 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.
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 works. 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.
Diversification
To God be the glory how far I have come as the leader of the union. I have been in the union for some years. In the 90s, I was the council chairman for two consecutive tenures. Year 2000, I became, the National Vice President, when Gbadebo was the president. In the year, 2005, I became the National Deputy President. That was the position I was occupying until September 29, 2016, when I became the National President. Definitely I have learned a lot of things and really learnt through the rope. I equally believed in continuity. From Gbadebo, we started together to Uzok, then myself. When you look at a particular building under construction in our secretariat, the foundation has been laid since 1993, during Damulak regime. The two immediate past regimes did not touch it. So when we came in, I told our Central Working Committee to grant me N2 million every month to develop the project. It’s now at the finishing level, the electrical work has been done, only painting and some minor installation, then the building will be completed. The same goes for our shopping mall, the last regime of Comrade 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 there now is the finishing. Our members are really working hard to ensure completion of the project, but for the guest house at the secretariat, we are going to commission it by June this year. We still have mind of doing more if I have the opportunity. 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 of 17 rooms, we will be able to cut down on such expenses. Also at times, we may need to to go to courts early in the morning. Some of our officers representing us can stay in the guest house, prepare all their documents and go together as a team.
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. Our main source of income presently is check off dues which is going down drastically now. We are not the only union who have come to terms with this, some are also diversifying. No doubt some do not have the challenges we are facing because their leaders have tried to do some investments. We equally have some other land at Gwagwalada in Abuja, that we have fenced and trying to develop as well.
