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By Bimbola Oyesola
As much as Organised Labour must try to foster cordial relationship with the employers, Comrade Lateef Idowu Oyelekan, President of the National Union of Food Beverage and Tobacco Employees (NUFBTE) believed that there would be a time that the union must fight to protect its members, else the union will lose focus if its mandate.
According to Oyelekan, NUFBTE under his leadership had fought so many of such battles and at the end came out victorious to the admiration of its members.
In this interview, he reveals all those ingenuity that sets the union apart from the others, which cut across fighting for the rights of the workers, negotiating improved salary for members every two years, midas touch in business, taking care of the veterans amongst others.
Excerpts:
Standing tall
The aim and objective of an organised labour movement is to take care of our members, their welfare but while doing that we have to prepare for the eventualities because things cannot be rosy all the times. Our relationship with employers as much as we try to make it cordial cannot be all the times, there would be time for misunderstanding and this may mean we have to go to industrial court for resolution. Our union have had cause to prosecute cases on behalf of our members who were wrongly terminated. One of such cases had been on before I was elected, my leadership believed that we had a case, we got our lawyer on it, it was against Nestle, the case dragged on for eight years. While the case was in court, the union was paying the member monthly stipends to take care of his family. At the end judgement was delivered in favour of our member, the court ordered that he should be reinstated with all his entitlements and N45 million was paid to him as compensation. Not only that, there were other sets of staff from Cadbury. About 28 of them, we believed that the termination of their appointments were wrong, hence we declared trade dispute against the management of Cadbury and the Ministry intervened, but the management took the case to court. It went on for about five years and at the end we won and the court mandated that the workers should be reinstated, all their emoluments paid including their long service awards.
Collective bargaining
Talking about welfare, this administration has been consistent with negotiation of collective bargaining for our members. We do this every two years and there’s never been a time that we failed. Even during the COVID-19 pandemic that our employers were trying to give excuses of inflation and others, we let them know that workers also had their own share of the difficulties and at the end of the day we were able to sign 24 percent increase on the basic salary, 40 percent on the housing and other remunerations. We have been very consistent with our negotiation since we came on board. We also designed it that whenever our members do an overtime, they have to be adequately compensated.
Impact of COVID-19 pandemic
The pandemic really affected businesses worldwide. But frankly, it affects those in Europe more than those of us in Africa. The multinationals were relying on their outlets in Africa to survive. We believe if that’s the case then those of us working in Africa ought to be compensated. Since 2020, there were no more lock down in our region here, our production was going on optimally. We gave our best to our companies, though it could not be the same as before the COVID, they could not generate the same profits as before, but the workers were doing their best to ensure that the company was not bankrupt or run at loss. We put on our best to ensure that the companies were not shut down. Nothing is static as far as economy is concerned, whatever we are experiencing now may be for sometime, then perhaps next year things will get better and the economy will bounce back. But not the same for human lives, that’s why we felt bad for those lives we lost during the pandemic. However as we look for a more favourable years ahead, we are appealing to our members to continue to give their best as it will have impact on our negotiation.
Organising
When we talk of organising, our union is really doing well, though there are some organisations that do not want their workers to be organised. However it’s more painful when those companies are indigenous, but the law of the country must be respected. If the citizens are not respecting the law, is it the foreigners that will respect the law? Like Bigi and a company owned by Otudeko, the case is already in the court, am sure we are going to win the case. There are others that we are going to start the process. We’ve been unionising and we’re getting good results. Another big challenge is the issue of contract workers. We believe in dialogue, robust discussion with our companies. However there are some companies who engage in this act, they have been doing it for long, when we discovered we wrote the companies that those workers who have joined the companies as casuals and have been there for years should be given automatic employment. This, we agreed should be done bit by bit. Another thing the union is doing on the contract workers is to have a guideline as there’s no law distinguishing workers in Nigeria. A worker is a worker. We have to protect Nigerian workers and we are working on the guidelines with the agreement of all, the union, management and the government. We believe that Nigeria is not big enough as a country to be engaging in contract workers, moreso were are not practising it well in Nigeria. Overseas, a contract workers can afford to do more than four jobs in a day and it was rated hourly. They can move from one job to another with good pay. But here, when an executive of the company retired, the company will compensate the man with a contract to provide casual workers. Then he would collect almost about N100, 000 and pay the casuals peanuts of less than like 30,000.
Then we wondered what the future of these contract workers would be. We also have graduates amongst them, which before now have great prospects. Hence in the food sector, we are giving it utmost attention. With the guideline, we will take it further, by ensuring that those sets of workers are protected. We may need to negotiate for them separately. It will not be that the contract staff are separated and remained on the same spots for ever, with no gratuity, no condition of service, no health benefits or any form of welfare.
Numbers organised
If am not exaggerating, since I took up the rein of leadership, I think we’ve organised between 15-20 companies. Amongst them are Lacasera, Bigi, AB&B biscuits, and a host of others.
Diversification, what you are doing differently
As a leader, the first thing you need to do is pray to God for vision and mission. You need to study your environment as well, because what happened this year can change the following year. Take a look at our sector, before now everything was manual, but now our employers have introduced machines and robots which are now taking over our jobs. As a leader, without being told, you must know that your members would be affected. Presently with the sophisticated machines and artificial intelligence, where we used to have 500 people in a line is now been reduced to 100 or 50. Those numbers reduced means lesser funds coming into the union and that’s a big challenge to us. The management were calling for redundancy, we know we cannot resist that. But we ensure that our members leaving were paid ex-gracia together with extra payment of one year. We started with three months, to six months, nine months and then one year. Not only that, the wife of the exiting workers has to be established and the products of the company, take for instance 7Up, the wife must be given 150 crates of the company’s products. Same for other companies. We established that. However, looking at the union, we also have to ensure its existence, in spite of the challenges. Though when I took over the leadership of the organisation, nobody did any handing over to us. We came in empty, but then the company that pays largest check off then was Nigeria Breweries, hiv was N5 million, and we agreed at the NAC to open a project account with the money. By six months we have gotten N30 million and used it on the foundation we met on ground from the regime of the first president of the union. The engineer charged us N35 million for the construction of the three floor Solidary Event Centres and it was completed under one year. The structure was coming at a time that the Lagos State Government under Raji Fashola outlawed road parties in the state. Hence we have a lot of patronages. We started with N120,000 and in a week we normally realised N250,000 and we put that too in the project account.
The place was commissioned in 2009, just when we were one year in the office. In 2010, we decided to build a guest house that can accommodate our members anytime they come to Lagos from different part of the country. We decided that we will look around Berger and bought the first uncompleted building at N45 million. We got some other structures around it and when the engineer looked at it, he said we could have a storey building of 50 rooms. That was how we turned it into a commercial hotel. As we were building the hotel, we believed that as operators in the food industry, with some of us having technical background, we could have a water factory and we went ahead with that equally and commissioned both the hotel and water factory in 2013. We equally floated a venture, which we called Solidarity Infinity Ventures, where we acted as distributors to our companies, selling different products from our companies at reasonable prices.
The challenge however came in the running of the hotel. We got a consultant, who was a professional and he did the recruitment and supervised the running of the hotel. But the first six months, nothing was coming in from the hotel. This was despite the fact that we supplied the hotel with drinks from the ventures. So after eight months, we sent the consultant packing and employed a controller, who equally diverted funds into his personal account. We made the accountant of the hotel, the new controller, that also went ahead to print fake receipts, he had to run away when we discovered his anomalies. We had different ugly experiences before we got it right. We’ve had a situation that they would kill sick cows for the restaurant. But eventually we told the administrator that we don’t want them to touch our money for any expenses, the secretariat would provide everything. We want accurate account and since then, the hotel has been profitable. We put all the money coming from the hotel into a business account and that was what we used to build the second phase in 2016 with more features, like swimming pool, multi purpose hall, gym, with additional 32 rooms. It was a great step for the union because we are getting reasonable income from the hotel. That also has given birth to another giant hotel in Ibadan presently under construction and will be commissioned before the end of this year. The structure in Ibadan is more formidable, it is forward ever, backward never. The second phase was a big improvement over the first, same for the Ibadan structure, it has to be more bigger, more colourful, more beautiful than the one in Lagos. In Lagos we have about 75 rooms combined and three storey building, but Ibadan is going to be five storey building. It’s an open roof building and with almost 90 rooms. We are going to have event centre and another branch of our water factory in the structure.
Ratings, Welfare of veterans
We cannot assess ourselves. We cannot write the exams and mark it by ourselves. We believe that the assessment of our performance should be left for the public to do. We have 45 industrial unions in Nigeria cutting across both private and public sectors.
However, we can learn from our environment, but you discovered that some human beings are selfish and greedy. When you look at our political class, a former governor, deputy are placed on salary for life with their vehicles changed from time to time and other accrued benefits. The same for the generals. I believe the trade union movement should enjoy the same. The General Secretaries have retirement benefits, but how about the presidents. I don’t like the way some of my colleagues are treating their former presidents. For instance, late Comrade Paschal Bafyau, it was Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) that mandated all the affiliates to contribute to build a house for his family. We have to take care of our elders, so that our children we take care of us. In our union, we make it a point of duty to take care of our veterans, most of them are dead, but those alive, for example our former president, Comrade Steven Osidipe, he was the one who acquired our secretariat. Our secretariat is one acre and two plots, he didn’t carve a plot or two for himself, rather he left everything for the organisation. After leaving the union, he would come from Ebute Metta where he resides to Cement where we have our secretariat with public transport, crossing the roads. He did that for 15 years and nobody thought of doing anything about his plights.
I studied that when I was deputy President for five years, and I’ve corrected that as a President. In our first year when we were commissioning the Multi purpose hall, we named it after him, S.O Osidipe multi purpose hall. The same day we presented a befitting Honda car each to him and Comrade Nansel Mamdam, another former President. After four years we replaced the cars, gave them Toyota Camry. We thank God that comrade Mamdam was able to get the Camry car before he died. We have changed comrade Osidipe’s car to Highlander Jeep now. We believe that he deserved it, the union had also built a house for him because as president despite the fact that he was sitting on the union’s money, he never used it to enrich himself. He was leaving in a rented apartment, when some of his colleagues then went away with their unions valuables. If the generals and the politicians can take care of their leaders, then we in the labour movement should be able to take good care of our leaders.
