Comrade Peters Adeyemi, a labour union activist of many years is Vice President of Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), General Secretary of the Non Academic Staff Union (NASU) as well as Vice President of Public Service International. He spoke with Tony Akowe on the sidelines of the just concluded 108th session of the International Labour Conference in Geneva, Switzerland. Excerpts:
The theme of the 108 ILO conference this year is building a future with decent work. What does this mean to the average Nigerian worker?
Decent work is about ensuring that you have a job that provides decent living for you with all the conditions attached to it.
We talk about the dignity of labour and the fact that you have to work in an environment that is conducive for you to be able to concentrate and be able to produce maximally. You don’t have a decent job when you have uncertainty surrounding your job. Most jobs are not secured and so become an indecent job because you don’t have what it takes. The environments of most jobs are such that you are not even sure that you can maximally concentrate.
I think that in Africa and maybe Nigeria, the problem of indecent job is clearly a big one because you don’t have decent job like you have in Europe. Let me talk about the problem of insecurity of employment which is a major crisis.
When the job is not secure, you cannot say it is a decent job. When the job is just about leaving and just finding a way to go somewhere in the morning and not that the job can provide for you and your dependent, that job is not decent. A job whose pay cannot maximally take you and your family for 30 days is an indecent job. Jobs that are created in an emergency manner through pronouncement by politicians are indecent jobs. Employ a graduate and putting him on N10,000 per month is an indecent job.
Politicising employment is a major problem. A decent job is that job in which you wake up in the morning, go out in decent transport and everything work and your pay is commensurate with your productivity and qualification. But I don’t think we have decent jobs in most parts of Africa especially with the preponderance of the jobs that exist in our country Nigeria. That is one of the biggest problems we are contending with as trade unions.
This year is a peculiar year in the life of the ILO. How can we use the lessons learnt in this past 100 years to build the future?
If you look back, you will discover that where we are right now is where we ought to be. But I think there have been successes and failures as well as challenges. For me, the most important thing is that the ILO has become such a global institution where tripartism has become very dominant. Government, employers and workers have had opportunity to come on the platform of the ILO to sit and resolve very nagging issues. During this period, we had serious contestation against the issue of strike which is one of the dominating things that happened this past 100 years. There was attempt to completely remove the right to strike.
You also know that no matter what a trade union does, once the right to strike is removed, you have rendered the trade union impotent because ultimately, that is the most veritable tool and weapon that the trade union has to get employers and government to begin to do the needful particularly in Africa and Nigeria where employers of labour hardly respect collective bargaining agreement.
In most cases, they freely enter into agreements, but do not honour it. So, I think that the ILO has successfully implanted tripartisim and the collective bargaining process has been institutionalised as several core conventions have been rectified by a number of countries and this impacted positively on the working people globally. So, even though there have been challenges and areas that should be covered, I think the existence of ILO is very significant and it has worked for the working people globally. I think we need to encourage the ILO to continue to move ahead in its efforts to getting tripartism solidified.
In the next 100 years, don’t you think that the working people will be at a disadvantaged position when employers and government will team up to put an end to strike?
I think the employers and government will continue trying to stop strike. But as long as the employers and government are involved in anti-workers policies, policies that are not favourable to workers, when workers are pushed to the wall, there is no way there won’t be strike. For instance, there are organisations and institutions that say there will be no strike and don’t even allow their workers to unionise.
In Nigeria, the police cannot form a union, but the police in South Africa have a union. But have you seen the other side of it? The police cannot form a union, but they went on strike. So, government and employers will continue to try to take that right away from the worker. But I can assure you that they will continue to fail.
If everything works well, who is interested in the disruption of the workplace? It is only a mad person that would want to close down the institution. But there are issues that make workers go on strike. You are aware that strikes don’t even start like that. There are conditions.
Trade unions will be writing to employers and government asking for certain things, they are ignored. In fact, there are laws that you make, but you cannot implement. So, any attempt by government and employers to take that right away will be an effort in futility. The truth is that it will not see the light of day except the right of workers globally are allowed and granted them when they ought to be granted, if you do it, you will fail.
You lead a group of workers who are on special salary scale different from what is obtainable in the core public service. How will these category of workers benefit from the new minimum wage?
It is very simple. When the minimum wage was approved and signed into law like, every sector went into bargaining. What we are waiting for now is the first table. The moment we see that template, we will start our own struggle.
Naturally, there will always be some positive impact flowing from the agreement on the national minimum wage. Don’t forget that this is not the first time we are doing minimum wage in Nigeria. I have participated in the processes.
This is the third time I have served on the committee and after that, we go into sectorial negotiations so that the aftermath of the minimum wage will also have its own reflection and impact on workers in the other sectors.
Don’t forget that some of these institutions are basically on one table with different names that is common to them. But the figures are the same. So, it may not really be a big problem as such. For the non-teaching staff, the figures are practically the same in all institutions. It is only the doctors and lecturers that have their own table. I’m sure those figures will also change now as a result of the new minimum wage.
The unions have resisted the implementation of the IPPIS in the tertiary institutions. What are the fears being nursed by the union that is responsible for them rejecting the IPPIS?
It is not correct to say that those of us in the tertiary institutions, particularly the unions are averse to or rejecting IPPIS. For this, I speak authoritatively for Non-Academic Staff Union (NASU) and for other unions in the sector.
We have had series of meetings with the Office of the Accountant General of the Federation and our position has been that we have certain peculiarities in our sector which are quite distinct from what you find in the core public service. We told them that to implement IPPIS in the universities, colleges of education and polytechnics and others, you must capture those peculiarities on the platform. Don’t forget that in the universities, we have sabbatical for those who go on sabbatical.
What that means is that you leave your place and go to another institution. We have a retirement age that is quite distinct from what is obtainable in the core public service and then we have some allowances such as the earned allowances. So, you cannot migrate staff of the tertiary institution to a platform that is essentially similar to what you have in the public service. If you do that, you are going to put us at a very serious disadvantage. Then, you look at some of the things that have been done so far with the IPPIS.
When they start, quite a number of workers’ salaries will not be captured for months, check off dues will not be deducted; cooperatives deductions will not be paid. These are the real issues that we have brought on board and we have insisted that this anomaly should be corrected and a platform designed for us.
But the office of the Accountant General has not been able to come up with such platform. We are saying design this platform, let us look at it and experiment it and make sure that it does not put our members at a disadvantage. The truth is that if IPPIS has worked in other places and government is saving money, we are not averse to fighting corruption.
We are also not against government making savings if there are people making quick money from releases for personnel emolument. But we are insisting because of those bitter experiences we have had in the research institutes who are on IPPIS already. But when they started, we were not able to generate check off dues from some of those research institutes for about one year. When you lose such money, nobody is going to deduct check off due in arrears. There were some workers whose salaries were not paid for month.
The problem again was that if you have an institution that is far from Abuja and IPPIS omits the name of a staff from the payroll, it is easy for that staff to move and start chasing IPPIS in Abuja. When salaries are prepared and paid within the institution, if there are problem, you can easily walk to the bursary department.
By now, one would expect that IPPIS would have learnt its lesson and put its house in order so that if they have to start the policy in the tertiary institutions, all the things we asked for would have been put in place and there will be no much problem. So, let me correct that impression. I know that in particular, NASU and SSANU recently wrote to the Office of the Accountant General that we are not adverse to the policy, but we want all those things we needed to be done and that when they are done, it will be fine by us.
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