The question of minimum wage has often made me think of the word commonsense. The very word provoked the American Revolution when a non-American used it to sue the conscience of the world. Thomas Paine employed it as a phrase, not a word. He titled his pamphlet, Common Sense. He was history’s first pamphleteer of freedom. The little piece of literature morphed into a torch of liberty in the infant nation, just like a century later when Harriet Beecher Stowe published her uproarious novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
Paine, in his subversive tone, asked a series of questions when his own country England held the Americans in colonial throttle. His questions were simple but pithy, and riled a continent against an island. One of his questions was how should a mere island hold a continent in its grip?
Today, there are quite a few questions of commonsense that NLC’s Agbaero and TUC’s Osifo ought to ponder. We must admit though, that reason has failed to pass muster in their universe. One, when George Akume, the country’s first scribe, said he could not pay his drivers N100k as salary, Agbaero and co. lashed out. Did they ask Akume what his salary is, what his bills are? If they say he is a “big man’ and can pay, it is because they often suggest politicians and government high-fliers misappropriate allowances for personal use. So, if they want him to steal to pay, are they not encouraging looting our treasury? Does that make them wise or foolish, or even corrupt?
Two, I asked the question last week? Is the NLC or TUC prepared to pay their security guards N250k as minimum wage? Are they going to milk the workers to obtain the money? Will NLC and TUC release their own prepared salary scale now and let us debate how they can pay for it.
Three, why is labour insisting on minimum wage for less than 10 percent of Nigeria’s work force? In saner societies, labour duels corporate elites who purloin the sweats of the teeming employees. Here in Nigeria, they attack the governments. Not that they should not. Their focus upends the logic of the philosophy of Labour. So, if the Federal Government pays N250k, how do they want to enforce it on the major labour centres in the country? Will they force it on the one-man business limping for survival? To demonstrate the irony, President Joe Biden recently ennobled the picket lines of autoworkers demanding better welfare.
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Four, why is Labour so parochial in its vision of the purview of their work for the Nigerian Labour? There are many areas Labour has perennially ignored. Why have they not paid attention, for instance, to foreign oppression of the Nigerian worker on our soil. Why have they not drawn a charter for the Chinese, Lebanese, Indians et al, who are reigniting a colonial slave ethic in their fiefdom of factories and shops across the country? Why have they not marched on Ikorodu and Ogun State where factories and warehouses have overshadowed the air and water with near apocalypse of pollution? Citizens crouch with diseases and mourn unheard. These quiet tik tock to death has become commonplace in the Niger Delta where rivers and farms have turned dark with crude oil and paralysed citizens and criminalised their consciences. Are they not workers, too. This new Labour is not like some of their hefty men of old like Imoudu, who understood the scythe and horizon of the Labour philosophy. The new honchos have turned themselves into a salary union, rather than a Labour union. A Labour union is a thinking fortress of society. They create a cooperative pool of ideas. They are also a moral vortex. Did Adams Oshiomhole not save nubile beauties from the predation of an amorous banking elite and policy? The great French writer and philosopher mapped out how great movements die. They start with utility, then they turn into privilege. At last, they fall into abuse. NLC and TUC are in the final phase. That august movement requires a rebirth.
Can the Labour not see its task as government’s partner in squelching the big ogre of the age: fake products. Or don’t they think labour should stop water-borne diseases in the form of “pure water” or fake drugs killing many in the country? American poet and writer Lucille Clifton noted that “We can’t create what we can’t imagine.” What our labour leaders need is imagination. Garcia Marquez, who won the Nobel Prize for turning the creative world upside down with fantastical tales, once proclaimed: “Freedom to the imagination.” He once also asserted that “imagination is more important than knowledge.” Agbaero and co. can’t imagine a Labour approach other than through strikes. It is a monotony and deadness of the imagination.
Hence, they shut down the national grid. A thinking Labour will not shut down a national grid. Records say the nation lost over N100 billion in the last strike. Is this a labour that seeks productivity? When Akume called them saboteurs, was he not right? If they cost the country N100 billion, what moral authority have they to challenge those who spend less to acquire SUVs? Do they have a moral authority.
In saner realms, positions in national grid and arms industry are not only given to their citizens, they are especially screened. National grid is not just an institution. Working there is not just a job but also a national service. It entwines both commerce and national security. Only a man of unpatriotic mindset will embark on a rant to defend shutting down the grid. Not even today when the nation is trying to stop banditry and other forms of subversion.
Is it commonsensical for Labour to seek salary hike for a fraction of the workforce and not eye the ire of inflation? If the salary jumps, inflation jumps, not only for those who will earn the new pay but those who can’t. The new earners earn a status of false privilege because the new pay dissolves in a revanchist inflation. It becomes a double jeopardy for those who do not earn the new pay and they are the majority. They will stoop under more inflation than the new earners.
If Labour is a thinking group, will they not muse former Ekiti State governor Kayode Fayemi’s point that they should map a federal salary policy? Sokoto cannot pay the same salary with Lagos. In the United States, wages are not created equal. They could have mused the point distinction between salary and wages Babatunde Raji Fashola’s (SAN) made in his book, National Public Discourse. He reiterated that point at Pastor Poju Oyemade’s The Platform.
Labour should know that they are partners, not necessarily cosy twins, with government. “They are,” in the words of Shakespeare, “both in either’s powers.” Labour needs commonsense for a common sense.
