•Unless Labour leaders are fishing for something else, they must respect the sanctity of essential services during strike
We had our reason for being particularly apprehensive when the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), led by Joe Ajaero, and the Trade Union Congress (TUC), led by Festus Osifo, issued an emergency ultimatum to the Federal Government to conclude their negotiations on a new minimum wage before May 31, or face a nationwide strike. We had always suspected the tendency to go beyond the permissible, especially on the part of the Labour leaders.
We acknowledge that strike is an inalienable right of workers, but it must only be a last resort, when negotiations have failed. Even then, there are procedures to follow before workers can down tools.
But, whether the strike called by organised Labour on June 3, in protest against the N60,000 offered by the Federal Government as the new minimum wage, as against the workers’ demand for N494,000, met the criteria for strike will continue to be a subject of debate, with people taking positions depending on which side of the divide they are. While the Labour leaders would insist they fulfilled all righteousness, the Federal Government felt otherwise. At least that much was clear from the statement credited to the Minister of Justice and Attorney-General of the Federation, Prince Lateef Fagbemi, who reminded the Labour leaders that their proposed strike was illegal as they needed to give the government a 15-day notice before embarking on strike. But we may never know who is right or wrong on this matter between both parties because such matters usually end with political solutions rather than get adjudicated upon by the courts.
To be fair to Labour, though, the negotiations had been going back and forth over the months; while inflation has continued to erode workers’ pay. The Federal Government instituted a tripartite committee comprising the federal and state governments on one hand, and organised private sector (OPS) and Labour as the two other legs, to thrash out the issues and come up with an agreeable and sustainable minimum wage.
To some extent, the government could be accused of tardiness in handling the matter as more often than not; it was almost after Labour had threatened industrial action that it would be jolted to action.
But minimum wage issue is not one that the Federal Government alone can decide because it is not only the governments –federal and states –that are involved; the organised private sector (OPS) is germane to whatever conclusion would be arrived at. The OPS has more workers than all the governments at both the federal and state levels.
So, minimum wage issues usually take time to conclude.
The issue, this time around became a peculiar mess, with Labour demanding an upward review of the minimum wage from the present N30,0000 per month to a whopping N615,000, which was later scaled down to N494,000. From where does the government start negotiation? Even if the government could afford the hike, how about the OPS? How about state governments, with some of them still unable to pay the current N30,000? At any rate, can both the NLC and TUC pay that as minimum wage to their employees? Or, don’t they know that once there is an agreement, whatever is agreed upon becomes the irreducible minimum by law, below which they too cannot go?
While almost every Nigerian knows and indeed has agreed that N30,000 cannot take even a family of two home in a month, given the spiralling inflation, neither the N615,000 nor N494,000 is realistic or sustainable. Even, assuming the money is there to pay, has Labour considered the impact of such bogus minimum wage on the economy? Should the country’s economy be so flagrantly dislocated to satisfy just a fraction of Nigerians that Labour claimed to be fighting for? Even the Guinness Book of Record would literally scream that what the eyes have not seen and ears have not heard has occurred in Nigeria if government ever acceded to either of Labour’s demands.
This was the singular reason many people thought the Labour leaders were either unserious or had some other motives beyond agitating for improved pay for their members, in tune with the current economic realities. An organised Labour that wanted minimum wage jacked up from N30,000 monthly to N494,000 to alleviate the suffering of poor workers must be pursuing other objective if it now shuts down the national electricity grid with the attendant dire consequences
Somehow, and sadly, the Labour leaders appeared to have played into the thoughts of people with this belief, wittingly or unwittingly, going by the way they conducted the strike.
They went straight for what could pass for the nation’s jugular after crude oil — electricity. They shut down the national grid at about 2.02 a.m. on June 3 that the strike was supposed to begin. That was barely two hours into their D-Day! Meaning they actually began the strike with the premeditated intention of crippling not just the government but the country at large. This is unthinkable. It is unacceptable.
Those who did such in the military era paid dearly for it. Plunging the country into darkness is not one of the things permissible even by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) Convention.
Granted that workers have a right to withdraw their services as a tool to force their employers to grant certain demands, there are certain services that are regarded as essential and therefore ‘no-go’ areas even during strike. Electricity supply is one. Even Nigerians in their blissful ignorance could not have believed that the national grid was going to be the first port of call for the impending strike. You can hardly blame them for this as no rational human being could have contemplated that lack of patriotism could sink that low.
Ajaero is a former General Secretary/CEO of the National Union of Electricity Employees (NUEE). Initial reports said workers at the grid were on duty before they were forced to shut down the place by ‘bouncers’’ that were enforcing compliance with the trade unions’ directive to their members to down tools, although this was later denied by the grid management.
So, was the grid shut down in blind solidarity with the workers’ former boss? Was it shut down to protest for a new minimum wage? Or was it shut down to cause economic adversity to the country?
The electricity sector was not the only essential service that was disrupted. For instance we also had the airports, hospitals, sea ports, schools, public examination, that were similarly affected by the strike. Banks, fire services, etc., too.
None of these services or sectors should, under normal circumstances, be affected by strike.
The Freedom of Association Committee of the Governing Body of the ILO defines “essential services” in its strict sense as “services the interruption of which would endanger the life, personal safety or health of the whole or part of the population.”
The committee listed the following as essential services: the hospital sector; electricity services; water supply services; the telephone service; the police and armed forces; fire-fighting services; prison services; the provision of food for pupils of school age and the cleaning of schools; as well as traffic control.
Coming home, the list of essential services, as contained in the First Schedule to the Trade Disputes Act 2005 as amended is too long to be reproduced verbatim here. However, Section 1 (a) of it specifically bars workers in the power sector from organising or participating in strike and workers in the sector cannot claim ignorance of this.
Electricity is not classified as essential service for the fun of it. It is pivotal to everything we do.
Labour leaders have to understand that there are limits to everything. There is nothing like absolute freedom. Where someone’s freedom stops, another person’s begins. Essential services are recognised as such internationally and so their workers are not permitted to join strikes because of the harmful consequences for the society. In some cases, the consequences are irreversible.
However, it is important that since the intention is not to deny workers in essential services the right to make demands like other workers; we need to make express provision for speedy conciliation and arbitration of disputes in essential services as obtained in most other jurisdictions.
It is just that we are not a country that takes data serious; otherwise we would have compiled the list of casualties in hospitals and elsewhere as a result of the strike. It is beyond the calculation in monetary terms.
We are constrained to write this editorial especially in view of the possibility of the strike resuming because there is no unanimity of opinion on the part of the different stakeholders. The state governments have said they cannot pay even the N60,000 that the Federal Government initially offered; the OPS has voiced an almost similar concern. Barring a shift of position, especially on the part of Labour, and should the strike resume, it must be noted that the power sector is a ‘no-go’ area.
Going forward, government must be ready to apply sanctions on Labour leaders who attempt to go that far again, before such an unpatriotic act becomes part of our new way of life. We have had Labour leaders who did well without violating the sanctity of essential services. As a matter of fact, no Labour leader would be rated highly by the number of times he committed illegality by throwing the entire country into darkness, with the attendant negative consequences for the same people he claims to be fighting for. Rascality should never again be taken that far.
