Daily Independent Online.
*
Thursday, July 01, 2004.
NUBIFIE to confront insurance firms over
‘casualisation’
By Bimbo Kesington,
Reporter
The National Union of Banks, Insurance and
Financial Employees (NUBIFIE) has moved its anti- unionisation and anti-casualisation
crusades to insurance firms even as it vowed that the ongoing attempt by
President Obasanjo to weaken Labour would not be an impediment to its struggle.
Speaking in an interview in Lagos, the
National Secretary of the union, Comrade Mohammad Mamman said, “We
haven’t recorded any resistance from the management of the banks we are
unionising their staff, and so we are now moving our campaigns to insurance
firms, because all workers should enjoy the right to collective bargaining.”
Mamman further said the regulatory agency
for insurance companies in the country, the Nigeria Insurance Association
(NIA), has shown its readiness to help NUBIFIE in ensuring that all insurance
companies comply with the demand for collective bargaining for all their
members of staff. “NIA has assured us of their cooperation. They have
told us that they will encourage insurance firms to allow unionisation amongst
their member of staff,” Mamman said.
The NUBIFIE scribe, however, said the
ongoing attempt by President Olusegun Obasanjo to proscribe the Nigeria Labour
Congress (NLC) would not impede the union’s campaign for the right to
collective bargaining by its members.
“ If the trade union bill is passed and the NLC is proscribed, it
will not affect us in our struggle against anti-Labour practices in banks and
insurance firms because individual industrial unions will still be able to
operate within their respective unions. The problem is that our bargaining
power will be weakened.”
According to Mamman, “No civilised government
will try to weaken the bargaining power of its workers. But because the
president was highly embarrassed by Labour during the strike, he has decided,
out of vexation to weaken the power of the NLC. I however think that by his
dismantling the NLC, he is calling for anarchism.” He stressed that multi Labour centre
had never been in the interest of workers. “ Its merely a divide and rule
approach because it is not going to help the country or assist development,
which will eventually lead to total disharmony in the Labour movement in the
country.”
