‘The coming of United Labour Congress will not undermine labour movement’
Joe Ajaero, president of the newly inaugurated United Labour Congress (ULC), spoke with select Labour correspondents on the grand plans to strengthen the labour movement, unionisation of staff of Arik Airlines and other sundry issues. KEHINDE AKINTOLA was there. Excerpts:
With the launch of United Labour Congress (ULC), there will be three labour centres in the country: the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), Trade Union Congress of Nigeria (TUC), and the ULC – if eventually registered. What is the future of labour movement in Nigeria with three labour centres?
Pre-1978, there were four labour centres in Nigeria, including the United Labour Congress. Then, it was United Nigeria Labour Congress. When Obasanjo came, they tried labour leaders, banned so many of them, the prominent labour leaders, people like Wahab Goodluck, from participating in labour movement. With that dictatorial muscle, they brought everybody together and you must belong to a single labour centre. It is not the culture of Nigeria labour movement to have a single labour centre but for the military. That is the last feature of the military dictatorship in the labour movement, the issue of having one labour centre. The military forced everybody together. Now the thing played up again in 1988 when we had the democrats and the progressives trying to split, but because we were still under military dictatorship, the atmosphere for them to have their separate centres, based on their ideological persuasion, was not there. So, at the end of the day it took some years; people came up to say ‘Okay, let us come together’.
Incidentally, the same Obasanjo came again around 2002/2003 and saw that under democratic environment you cannot compel people to remain in one room if they don’t want to be there. You looked back at Section 40 of Nigerian Constitution which says you have the right to form and belong to any trade union of your choice, religion or political affiliation and it is in exercise of that that the TUC was registered. Incidentally, TUC was registered as the first labour centre with the number 001. NLC doesn’t have a registration number today, up till now. If somebody is telling you about registration or no registration, they have not done that. If it is all about receiving licence or certificate after the amendment of plural labour centres, they don’t have that. Let nobody deceive himself, TUC is 001 and there is no 002 as at today. Inasmuch as I wouldn’t want to go into controversy, the atmosphere has been opened for people to belong to labour centres with some criteria; which is to avoid mushrooming of labour centres. They now get some conditions including that there must be 12 industrial unions before you can apply for registration and part of the last features required for you to register is that you must have a conference where you adopt a constitution, where you adopt a name and where you elect officers. These things should be forwarded to the Ministry of Labour and the same Labour Act made it clear that after this you can start operating as a labour centre, including collection of dues. Now in exercise of this, that is what we are trying to do. We are not fighting anybody, we did not attack anybody, and we would not attack anybody. That is the origin of it. So I am saying that for the fact that we have three doesn’t mean we cannot have four and if we had four in 1978, when we didn’t have this number of companies, this number of unions, and this number of workers, the tendency for us to have more is now if it will serve our purpose. But that doesn’t mean that a worker’s problem is not a worker’s problem but the era of omnipotent labour centre is over. So it is based on the service we can render to workers. You ask yourself, why do they say we must have the other trade unions? The laws must have said that there must be only one trade union, we have over 40 trade unions and we still come together to take decision, to take action. So I don’t see it as a disservice or minus to the labour movement in Nigeria.
Incidentally, the same Obasanjo came again around 2002/2003 and saw that under democratic environment you cannot compel people to remain in one room if they don’t want to be there. You looked back at Section 40 of Nigerian Constitution which says you have the right to form and belong to any trade union of your choice, religion or political affiliation and it is in exercise of that that the TUC was registered. Incidentally, TUC was registered as the first labour centre with the number 001. NLC doesn’t have a registration number today, up till now. If somebody is telling you about registration or no registration, they have not done that. If it is all about receiving licence or certificate after the amendment of plural labour centres, they don’t have that. Let nobody deceive himself, TUC is 001 and there is no 002 as at today. Inasmuch as I wouldn’t want to go into controversy, the atmosphere has been opened for people to belong to labour centres with some criteria; which is to avoid mushrooming of labour centres. They now get some conditions including that there must be 12 industrial unions before you can apply for registration and part of the last features required for you to register is that you must have a conference where you adopt a constitution, where you adopt a name and where you elect officers. These things should be forwarded to the Ministry of Labour and the same Labour Act made it clear that after this you can start operating as a labour centre, including collection of dues. Now in exercise of this, that is what we are trying to do. We are not fighting anybody, we did not attack anybody, and we would not attack anybody. That is the origin of it. So I am saying that for the fact that we have three doesn’t mean we cannot have four and if we had four in 1978, when we didn’t have this number of companies, this number of unions, and this number of workers, the tendency for us to have more is now if it will serve our purpose. But that doesn’t mean that a worker’s problem is not a worker’s problem but the era of omnipotent labour centre is over. So it is based on the service we can render to workers. You ask yourself, why do they say we must have the other trade unions? The laws must have said that there must be only one trade union, we have over 40 trade unions and we still come together to take decision, to take action. So I don’t see it as a disservice or minus to the labour movement in Nigeria.
What is your reaction to the concerns raised over pluralisation of labour movement in Nigeria and its impact on workers’ wellbeing?
I stated that there were four labour movements from the beginning. Today, what we have is three. They have not been pluralized. Even these three cannot finish addressing the problems of the workers. Since the unfortunate thing that happened in NLC in the last two years, I will tell you that the NLC has not attended to the problems of anybody from my own group. Nobody, not even when we were picketing Ikeja or whatever. So I don’t think it is pluralisation but there is room independently for mergers and acquisition. If we are registered and along the line we are not doing well, we will be swallowed by a stronger centre or we have an arrangement with other centres to be one but not by compulsion. It’s like somebody issued a statement, you can’t go, and you can’t do this. You will not get much from this if the people failed to buy in that we are together. Many unions, even the ones with us and others, we are talking of union A and B coming together, becoming strong or union A and B acquiring one because of their strength so that we join together. Those things are things we can do independently not because anybody wants to force us. If there is an issue and we have divergent views, your ability to take an independent action makes you a strong labour centre. You saw the last fuel crisis, you were there when I was lamenting; we said we were not part of this, we didn’t sign this notice, but they moved on, they took their independent action. Now, if it paid well and they now get something better than what we got, it shows their strength. If they were the people that said they were not going to be part of this action, I and my group will take action; and if the action doesn’t move the people who are leading this country to talk to us, it means we are not equally qualified to answer a Labour centre or to be referred to as a Labour centre. So by the time we move one year or two years and we discover that we can’t do it alone, we may we fuse together naturally. Nature will take its course.
This issue has been on for some time without resolution. Why do you think that this is the right time for you to come up with another centre and with the level of crisis leading to this decision, don’t you think it will seriously affect your ability to work together in the future if you eventually get registered?
I think we should stop being fixated. The solution to the crisis is what has happened. We have sat down and thought in various ways about it. How do we do this? We resolved to forget about it. We discovered that even the people we are equally operating with will not agree on any of those issues we have decided jointly. We discovered that on daily basis, it is either they are sending Police or EFCC to you to say you did this, or arranging some people from their own sector to send petition against you. That level of undermining you when you are together or when you want to be together does not help any matter. I want to tell you today that if Igwe and I are with the NLC, Ayuba can’t make a statement; he will not function. I am not trying to boast. And now the lull in the labour movement would have been attributed to internal wrangling. That will be a big disgrace to the movement. I have tried to apply this policy of staying away even after the conference. He can’t mobilize more than me to have taken over the secretariat, but it appears people still don’t understand that we don’t want the collapse of the Labour movement. I can’t see the current move as a way of undermining the labour movement. That is the only way we can have a solution and I stated it. For me, after that strike, no phone call either from me to him, or from him to me, no meeting, we have not even by accident seen one another but the movement must go on. The workers are suffering, we have to render services, so I don’t believe that it will undermine it and it cannot. What I believe is that we have moved on and as a Christian today, I can go to the mosque tomorrow and say I am now a Muslim. That one is not negotiable. People woke up either from the PDP and said they want to form APC, it is their freedom, and they formed it and moved on. But if you are now saying that they cannot belong to the other party, that if they go to the other party there is no unity of political class, that there is a division in the political class, it doesn’t follow. If I leave Catholic Church and go to Mountain of Fire, the highest the Pope will do is to see if he could talk to me to remain with the Catholic Church. The Pope can’t decree that I can’t go to Mountain of Fire or Redeemed to worship. That is what has happened now. To do that, you now know where the trouble is coming from for exercising that freedom without fighting with anybody. We are not ready to join issues on a whole lot of matters coming up, the one directed at Ajaero or whatever. We are not joining issues with them. We want to see whether we can render services in our own little way to the working class even if it involves unity in diversity. You will serve two or three organizations here, I serve two or three organizations there, cumulatively, it will be service to the Nigerian workers, and we would be rated based on our services to the workers, not based on the whole world stood still for us to answer the president of world labour movement when the workers are suffering.
Do you have the required number of affiliate trade unions based on the extant Labour law and have you met all the necessary procedures for registration?
I want you to leave that. If we are 11 unions and we want to register and the law says 12, they will not register us. Get this right because I know why I am saying this. If I know that it is 12 and I am going there with 11, you can see the foolishness on my part. It then means no one will listen to me. That is why I say we have to de-emphasize that area. But I am telling you, more than 12 unions left from the NLC, and I am telling you that unions from the TUC and unions that are not affiliated to any for now are into this. This is not a faction of NLC; there are unions from TUC, there are unions that are not affiliated to NLC and TUC and there are those unions from the NLC that pulled out, which I can count up to 12 or more. They have come together to have a kind of mega arrangement to form this centre. If somebody is saying it is not up to 12, you allow the people who are responsible to count and know whether those unions are registered or not; because it is the same organization that registered those unions that we are taking these names to. When they look at their records and they were not registered, they drop them. So, if we do this, I think we will be reducing tension. As I have explained, this is not a faction of NLC having a Labour centre. No! This is a mega arrangement, unions from the Trade Union Congress, whether one or two or four or five; unions that were not affiliated before. The point I am making is that the unions that pulled out of NLC are enough to register. We didn’t go to register those ones that left from NLC as a centre so the aim will not be defeated as if it is a faction. We have to align and start this process. So the NLC and TUC alone cannot be fighting us when we have people who were not aligned with any of the centres before. If NLC is challenging that NUEE is still its member, they can then write a letter to us that we are still their member and so cannot take that step. That is the area we can go to. Even if we are two or three, let them reject it based on that number. Like other conditions you asked, we are trying to present them. If there are other conditions that they felt we have not met, they can reject it.
What is your ideology?
Workers’ centrism. The workers first, which means if the worker is hungry, it will affect us. If he doesn’t have any salary increase, it will affect us. First and foremost, there is no other thing that is bringing us to this business if not the workers. So, that is the ideology, that is what will drive us and we would resist neo-liberalism because it has killed jobs in Nigeria, it has killed a lot of people. When jobs are killed, people die. That is why we have to align with workers in the aviation sector to ground Arik; and after that, even after 10 years of Arik refusing unionization, they signed an agreement that they have admitted unionization and that the seven months salaries would be paid immediately.