Six months after lecturers in public universities walked off their jobs in a dispute with the government, it appeared for a moment that a sad chapter in the evolution of the nation’s educational system was about to be closed with an apparent breakthrough in protracted talks.
The other university unions have agreed to return to work on the back of government agreeing to payment of N50 billion in earned academic allowances.
The industrial action supposedly about adoption of the University Transparency and Accountability Solution (UTAS), renegotiation of the 2009 agreement, halt to proliferation of universities and release of revitalization funds.
So what has the union gained from its struggle with authorities? Among other things professors and lecturers have been given a pay hike of between 27 and 35 percent. The government has committed to using the UTAS payment system after the stout resistance to its preferred Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS). So the lecturers have clearly done well with much of what they sought being delivered to them.
But the little matter of payment of salaries for the six months they didn’t work is now a cog in the wheel.
Government says it’s implementing the ‘no work, no pay’ policy. The teachers argue that while they did no work during the strike period, they would be delivering make-up lectures for the period students were away from class.
It’s a shame that a strike that was originally framed as being about saving tertiary institutions from collapse has ended up being about personal entitlement. Students and parents who have suffered collateral damage as a result of the flexing of muscles by the two sides have become no more than pawns.
Predictably, opinion has been divided over this last-impasse. Some argue that the strike is a product of government’s refusal to adhere to agreements reached so it should pay up. Others who just want to move on argue that it isn’t the first time the authorities would turn a blind eye to the so-called ‘no work, no pay policy’ just for the sake of peace.
Yet, there are those who insist that ASUU cannot on grounds of equity insist on being paid for work it didn’t do. It’s position that it would be taking remedial lectures cannot hold water. Over the past three to four decades the union has embarked on such regular and drawn-out strike actions, ostensibly to force government to address issues faced by tertiary institutions. But it remains to be seen if its approach has worked given that its been doing the same thing since the 80s with modest results.
Of course, lecturers are not to blame if successive administrations never gave education the sort of attention it deserves. Still, we must ask whether the extreme deployment of union power has helped the situation. Under what circumstance can anyone defend universities being shut for six months because conditions are not perfect?
What aspect of our national life is the way it should be? Healthcare is grossly underfunded leading to increased medical tourism by those who can afford to do so and brain drain on the part of well-trained personnel. Would the sorry state of our public hospitals be enough justification for doctors and nurses to walk off their jobs for six months, and return after the period to insist on being paid for doing nothing? It just sounds immoral and unreasonable.
As a result of the incessant and prolonged strikes, many students are spending five or six years for courses that should have lasted no no more than three or four years. The lecturers can take make-up classes to enable them meet graduation requirements, but who will give them back the wasted years? Who helps them deal with the emotional and psychological fallout from the dysfunction in the system? While the varsity unions would want government to take all the blame, they cannot absolve themselves given their extreme methods.
There was a time when ASUU enjoyed much sympathy given the lopsided-ness and inherent inequities in the reward system in Nigeria’s public service. But over time that goodwill has been grossly eroded as frustrated students and parents begin to question what exactly these strikes are all about.
Unfortunately, the unions don’t seem know when they have won. Now, they’ve boxed themselves into a corner with the government’s insistence on not paying for work not done. It’s hard to fault the authorities on this. The choices open to the lecturers is stark. Are they ready to prolong the strike on grounds they should be paid for work not done? How long are they willing to go? Every day they prolong this shutdown is a public relations disaster for the union.
With the non-academic staff unions returning to work ASUU is becoming increasingly isolated and susceptible to official action to clip their wings. Although, the government had denied it had any intention of proscribing the union, the mere fact this is being discussed is clear indication where public sentiment is headed.
It has had a long run of successes through the decades is its face-offs with the authorities, but it would do well to learn from what happened to Britain’s National Union of Mineworkers (NUM). At one time it was the country’s most powerful union under the leadership of the legendary Arthur Scargill. Whenever it threatened industrial action, governments shivered because of the central role of the miners to the country’s energy needs in the 70s.
But the uncompromising union leader soon ran into an equally obdurate Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher who engaged him a year-long war of attrition that ended with humiliation for him and the NUM. As the strike dragged on, miners who couldn’t feed their families began to crawl back to work unconditionally. Soon there was a split in the ranks of the all-powerful union.
By the time the strike would be officially called off it had nothing to show for its year-long exercise in foolhardiness. That led to the downfall of Scargill.
ASUU and it’s leaders can avoid a similar fate by making some sacrifices and terminating their strike now – even if it means accepting what it considers punitive ‘no work, no pay’ terms. It shouldn’t delude itself into thinking it only can emerge unscathed from a battle that has damaged all sides.