We’re Not Going To Accept Anything Less Than N250,000, Organized Labour Insists
Against the backdrop of the federal government’s proposed N62,000 as new minimum wage for Nigeria’s workers, organized labour has sounded a warning that it will not accept anything less than N250,000.
Spokesperson for the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), Benson Upah, in a statement, labelled the government proposed N62,000 as a demonstration of non-seriousness in addressing workers’ grievances.
Benson Upah said that the proposed ₦62,000 is insufficient to maintain a decent standard of living amidst the escalating cost of living in the country.
He stressed that the Union would not accept the government position, saying: “No, not all….it is far too low below the threshold. No deal. Government is not serious yet.”
This was even as the Trade Union Congress (TUC), insisted the proposed N250,000 minimum wage.
It cited necessity of the N250,000 to meet the challenges of the present socio-economic climate.
The TUC’s first deputy president, Tommy Okon, said that the proposed amount is justifiable considering various socio-economic factors, such as housing, transportation, healthcare, education, and tariffs, as outlined in the cost of living index.
He advised President Tinubu to consider their proposal in line with the current realities.
“You are aware that our position is very clear on the minimum of N250,000. If we had done otherwise, you would have seen. So, we have taken our position to Mr. President, through the committee.
“So, let Mr. President decide. That is our position. We stand by ₦250,000 national minimum wage.
“Like I said, it is now at Mr. President’s prerogative, because what we have done is to help the government and also to help the President work this stuff. Remember, when Mr. President said fuel subsidy was gone, he said he was going to pay workers a living wage. So, we have been able to put out a variable facts that can technically prove that ₦250,000 could be manageable as a living wage. This is because when you look at the value of ₦62,000, and the present socioeconomic challenges, it cannot amount to what Mr. President referred to in his inaugural speech as a living wage.
“So, we are helping the government to work, because what the government has offered so far cannot be justifiable going by the present cost of living. The reason is that there is no variable fact to speak on it. Is it for housing? Is it for transportation? Is it for medical? Is it for education? Is it for tariff? These are indices that we have come to look at through the cost of living index that ₦250,000 is justifiable.
“So, that is what we are doing. And we believe that Mr. President is very sensitive, and that he would look at it as a democrat and see that, yes, what the workers have put forward is also considerable in line with the present reality. So, that is our position and we believe that Mr. President, who came on to announce the removal of fuel subsidy without consulting us, will also find a way to see that he appeases us, because when that was done, we never went on strike. So, in this case, Mr. President will also consider that they need to give us a wage of ₦250,000.”
The federal government Tripartite Committee had submitted its report to President Bola Tinubu last Friday. The Committee, made up of representatives of the federal and state governments as well as the private sector, recommended a minimum wage of ₦62,000.
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Indolent Labour Union, Matters Arising, By Hassan Gimba
For the past four years, I have been insisting that our problem and even need now is not about salary increment but about being a productive nation that produces what it needs and uses what it produces. This would galvanise our economy and strengthen the naira. With a strong currency, ₦30,000 is more than enough as a basic salary. Just imagine the naira to be equal to the dollar and there was a time when ₦60 was equal to $100. Here I have reproduced an old writeup on this topic.
There is no Nigerian that will tell you he is not aware of the NLC even if he does not know that it is an acronym for the Nigeria Labour Congress. What the average Nigerian knows about them is that they always go on strike at the drop of a hat, strikes that have lost their meaning because they always achieve almost nothing.
Well, there’s nothing in it for the average Nigerian; only for the vanguards of the congress. At least, that is what an average citizen will tell you. This suspicion, or rather an assumption, is fueled by the fact that days into a strike, the comrades would be shown on national television laughing and exchanging banters with government officials, and the next you hear is that the strike is suspended while the reasons for the strike in the first place remain unresolved.
Citizens suspect the laughs from the chubby-cheeked people on the telly mean each side is happy with what transpired at the closed-door meeting despite the cause of the strike remaining unsolved.
A good example is that of fuel increase or subsidy withdrawal. The labour leaders would shout, give ultimatums and then mobilise workers for a strike. And these strikes affect everyone, not only workers because the public and private sectors are intricately connected. Yet the issue (subsidy) lingers: the palliatives promised, even though mainly targeted to help government workers, are too little or are still being awaited.
We were witnesses to a long strike, getting to almost a year, by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), yet the NLC was nowhere to be found.
But what is getting alarming now is that the labour union, like our governments and their institutions, is becoming a tool for personal causes. There is no reason for the union to call a national strike because its president was assaulted. If he was attacked because he was fighting for fairness and justice, then that should be seen as a sacrifice for his role.
Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Aminu Kano, Gambo Sawaba and many other great freedom and human rights fighters never privatised or personalised their struggles or made people fight the system because they were assaulted.
In any case, how many Nigerians have been attacked, humiliated and dehumanised without the labour union fighting for them? How many have been killed, some by non-state actors and some by security agents? And some victims were public servants. If labour says it is there for the workers, where was it?
And despite this, they are full of cowardice. For instance, the labour union president was manhandled in Owerri, but they came to Abuja Airport to block access roads and, after that, they embarked on a nationwide strike.
We have had many labour leaders, right from Michael Imoudu, popularly known as Pa Imoudu, the father of labour unionism in Nigeria, but none of them personalised the labour struggle till now.
Wahab Goodluck, the first president of the NLC, who served between 1978 and 1984, led the struggle for better wages and working conditions. He fought against the government’s attempt to deregulate the economy and privatise state-owned enterprises. He organised the NLC and made it a force to be reckoned with, but he never personalised the struggle.
Paschal Bafyau, who took over from Goodluck, made the NLC more politically conscious and active, but he never personalised the union. He successfully negotiated a minimum wage and led the union in the fight to usher in civilian rule in 1999.
One of the greatest presidents the NLC ever had was Ali Ciroma, who served from 1988 to 1994. He fought against General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida’s move to introduce the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP). The union gained strength and influence under his leadership, but one thing he did not do was personalise its activities.
Adams Oshiomhole, who served as its president from 1999 to 2007, gave the labour union more visibility, influence and effectiveness but he never personalised its fight.
One may contend that the quality of the labour union and its search for solutions for the Nigerian worker and, ultimately, the country started nose-diving after Oshiomhole. Many people expected the union to be at the vanguard of solving the country’s problems instead of being self-serving and bringing archaic ways to help the workers and the country.
A good example is the one to do with minimum wage. For how long will labour unions continue mouthing ‘salary increments’ in the face of dwindling national income and the plummeting value of our currency?
Perhaps out of intellectual paucity, they have failed to propose a more intellectually viable option, to both workers and the government, about how to stabilise the naira and make us a nation that produces what it consumes and vice versa.
Every patriot knows that buying things from abroad causes capital flight. A patriotic labour union should be the last to sanction a situation where our government spends hundreds of billions of naira annually to buy cars from foreign manufacturers, thereby keeping afloat other countries’ economies to the detriment of ours.
But Nigerian labour leaders feel comfortable being chauffeur-driven in foreign cars, keeping foreign businesses thriving and foreigners employed while Nigerian youths are jobless and languishing in abject poverty because the country’s industries are dead. How patriotic! This is why they cannot offer a better alternative other than asking for a salary increment. They do not have the intellectual capacity to know that it is not the quantity but the quality of the currency that matters.
Take, for instance, the case of China and Germany, where the minimum wages are $358 (about ₦405,000 as of last week) and 1557 euro (₦1,845,000) respectively, now cast your mind back to when the naira was at par with the dollar and assume our minimum wage of ₦30,000 is $30,000, don’t you think that is more than enough?
Yet still, workers in some of these countries enjoy free housing, healthcare, education, affordable public transport and a constant supply of electricity. This is why salaries have value there.
Our labour union, which should be fighting for better working conditions and stronger currency, is instead fighting for more money, thereby courting inflation and encouraging capital flight through patronising foreign goods and services.
With our bumbling, self-serving and intellectually lazy labour union, it is high time we started scrutinising their motives and their base desires.
Hassan Gimba is the publisher and editor-in-chief of Neptune Prime.