Fuel strike issues take central stage today as Reps visit Labour Bill
From Pascal Nwigwe Abuja
MONTHS after the Upper House passed the now contentious Labour Bill, the House of Representatives is still battling with the bill. To get bill past the hurdles of the First and Second Reading and to a public hearing, House Leader Abdul Ningi had to employ all the legislative skills learned from four previous years in parliament.
As the member charged with the constitutional responsibility of pushing bills from the Executive, Ningi had also manoeuvred the bill out of the road to certain death by first streamlining the debate to three issues.
He said: "Three areas of reservations have been cited. First is the proscription of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC). The second is the registration by the Minister and the third is the banning of strike."
In addressing the fears of the lawmakers, he assuaged them by coming close to prophesying that the vexatious clauses probably will not see the light of day, given the powers of the Lower House.
He then threw in what was seen as the emotional blackmail: "I thank all the Honourable members of the House because you have not shamed us and you have not shamed Nigerians by not deciding to kill the bill prior to receiving public input."
But his manoeuvres did not prevent the assault, much as they triumphed by securing the bill into the hands of the 17-man committee. Under fierce contest was the 'no strike' clause, understood by the lawmakers in the House and the
Senate, as an outright prohibition of industrial strike and protest. Section 3 of the Amendment bill provided that trade unions seeking registration would be compelled to undertake not to embark on strike at will. Arguments raised against this provision centred on accusing the executive, which drafted it, to warning the Federal Government against the implication of violating the statute of the International Labour Organisation (ILO) to which Nigeria is a signatory.
Said Olusola Adeyeye, representing Boluwaduro/Ifedayo/Ila constituency: "Nigeria is signatory to the ILO Convention and that convention grants to workers the right to form Trade Unions and for those trade unions to embark on strikes. Therefore, by what law of Nigeria, legal or legitimate, what moral argument and by what brazen contravention of ILO convention can we now make a law for Nigeria that says an organisation can only be registered as a trade union only if it signs a no strike clause?"
Adeyeye who was a university lecturer before he came to the House of Reps, is the Deputy Chairman of the Committee on Peace and Conflict Resolution. He urged his colleagues to find the courage to vigorously oppose the President on that point.
He added: "Also to be defeated is the clause that seeks that no strike can be embarked upon until two-thirds of the membership of a union have given their authority for it. How will it sound, if tomorrow an amendment that says that whatever the President brings to this House cannot be changed unless two-thirds of us say no. There is no democratic institution in this world that demands two-thirds consent before an action can be taken except when you are amending the constitution of a nation."
Others who opposed the 'no strike' clause dismissed it as pointless. Suggestions to this effect were that government and society are better off under the present system whereby accountable and identifiable leaders carry out industrial protests in an organised manner.
Abulfatai Buhari (Ogbomosho/North/South Oriere) posits that the alternative to "no strike" by organised labour will be protests and rampaging, which will tend towards chaos, whereby nobody will be held accountable and no leaders available with whom government could bargain for a stoppage.
Buhari said: "As for strikes, there will continue to be strikes. The people do not even need a leader, because when they are hungry and angry they will go on strike."
The members of the House had also argued that the reform required ought to be the holistic review of labour relations in the country and not just a clause or two seemingly selected to stifle the employee.
Fleshing the existing Trade Union Act, M.S. Zakari from Kano State cited obligations of the employer to the worker as stipulated by law. Comparing the document with the amendment bill, the item was absent in the latter. "In the old law, there is a right guaranteed for workers to embark on strike, and at the same time, there is also an obligation on the part of employers not to lock out all employees. But this amendment (bill) is denying the rights of workers to embark on strike and taking away the responsibility or obligation of employers to workers," Zakari observed.
Azumi Namadi Bebeji, a former unionist and representing Kiru/Bebeji sees the omission as further eroding the already wobbly concept of job security in Nigeria by giving employers the muscle to hire and fire at will.
Jimoh Tijjanni (Saki East/West/Atisbo) argued that labour is in no position, as it is, to force anybody or union join strikes at the same time and cannot remove a worker from office for declining to join in any industrial action. "If this is so, then what are we amending," he asked.
However, despite the high arguments, the amendment of the bill still found some support. The bill predictably found support among the entrepreneurs in the House who complained outside the chambers of having been victims of strikers and labour leaders for carrying on with unlawful activities during strike. Deputy Chairman of House Communications Committee, Leo Ogor told The Guardian that labour unionists had damaged his car while they were on industrial strike.
Even as he opposed the 'no strike' clause, Adedeye decried the manner in which he was chased out of a banking hall during a nation-wide strike.
The Chairman of the House Petroleum Resources Committee, Cairo Ojougbo (Ika/North/East/South), recollected the refusal by the Sokoto State chapter of the NLC to join nation-wide strike declared by the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC). He stressed the sanction in form of a suspension meted out to the Sokoto NLC for its non-compliance.
"The case at hand is that those who do not accept the tenets of a particular action or do not believe in the excuses for a particular strike are being forced to agree. This is neither in consonance with democracy nor respectful to the freedoms of the individual," he argued.
Decentralisation of Labour
Pushing his arguments into the question of decentralisation of Labour in the country, members of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the House likened the present single trade union arrangement to the totalitarian era of communism and military dictatorships. Alluding to government's efforts at liberalisation of the various economic sectors, Ojougbo, Ralph Okeke and Igo Aguma said it smacked of hypocrisy for any country to preach free market economics and yet abandon Labour to the shackles of unitarism.
Said Ojougbo: "A system where Labour can sit down and then decree a common wage is unacceptable. I represent Delta State and I know that workers in the state earn more than workers in Sokoto State.
"So for somebody to ask Sokoto, Benue and Delta states to pay the same salary is not possible. If that is done, some states will be crippled because all states, like people, are not equal. There will always be differentials."
Aguma placed the question of decentralisation on the same pedestal with the deregulation of the telecommunications and downstream petroleum sectors.
"This House agrees to deregulation and we want to deregulate Labour," Aguma said, stressing that the exercise in question is not necessarily about the NLC but the entire landscape of Labour unionism in Nigeria.
But even the President of the NLC, Mr. Adams Oshiomhole, is not completely opposed to breaking the monopoly his organisation enjoys as the sole labour organisation in Nigeria. His prime worry is with the president's supposed intent on seeing the NLC scrapped, to pave way for the emergence of other labour centres.
Oshiomhole has often told members of the House of Representatives that, "we do not have to die for others to come up." And his entreaties appear to have worked. Throughout the debates, the issue of an approval from the minister of Labour as a condition for the registration of unions was relegated to the background and hardly any mention was made about killing the NLC.
Meanwhile, Buhari described the call for a proliferation of centres as an attempt by the executive to clip the wings of labour. During the debate, a member from Osun had asked: "What are they afraid of? Even if we have different trade union centres like the NLC, they will still come together in coalition and call for a strike."
Referring to the popular belief that the NLC is perhaps the only potent force against unpopular policies by the government, Bebeji voiced the fears in the chamber on the plights of the common Nigerian under an emasculated or proscribed NLC. "If we allow the Nigeria Labour Congress to be dispersed, what will the workers of this country do? I know there are places where the employers will do whatever they like with the workers," Bebeji said.
It could be said that both in and outside the House, PDP members in the House of Representatives have always seemed upset with the notion of a super NLC standing as an opposition to government. Ojougbo had cautioned members of the All Nigerian Peoples Party (ANPP) and the Alliance for Democracy (AD) caucuses in the House against any tendency of reclining and watching the NLC usurp their function as opposition.
Beyond the issues of proscription, strikes and ministerial interference, other questions were raised. They bordered largely around on the motives. Several members of the House of Representatives questioned the altruism of the Presidency in drafting the bill.
On the first day of the Second Reading when 14 persons took to the floor to support and the same number called upon to oppose the bill, Tijjani with a harsh voice sounded like an Old Testament prophet. He said, "at a time everyone in this country should be concerned with the problem of poverty, hunger, unemployment, and election-rigging that are bedevilling this country, that is the time the executive is ready to clamp down on dissension, real or imagined. This is unfortunate. Is labour the cause of all these? Is labour the cause of hunger in the country? Is labour the cause of unemployment in this country? Does it mean that labour has not done anything good for this country?"
The lawmakers also expressed fears over the capacity and sincerity of the proposed committee to conscientiously work on the bill after taking it to public hearing. Said Bebeji: "If this bill goes to the committee and then to public hearing, will the committee be sincere in dealing with it? If there is going to be any amendment, I suggest that there should be public hearing in either all the states or the six geo-political zones. The NLC and the workers especially should be invited to bare their minds. Any amendment should be such that the workers' interest is protected."
The Chairman of the House Committee on Solid Minerals, Ogbuefi Ozomgbachi, in his presentation aptly captured the views of those who supported the advancement of the bill. He said the House was duty bound to ensure that the bill met the standards of fairness, equity, justice, fair play and constitutionality by putting it through the scrutiny of a public hearing.
"Through a public hearing, we will be able to address certain issues of principles that are contained in this bill that are generating this tension. These include the issue of deleting the NLC as the only central labour organisation in Nigeria and whether the existing Act goes against the import, spirit and intent of Section 40 of the Nigerian Constitution. We also need to know whether the liberalisation of formation of labour centres goes against Section 40 of the Constitution. There is also the issue of voluntary membership of trade unions. And is a provision like the 'no strike' clause favouring the employer against the employee," he said.
Still in the process of convincing the House on the need for a public hearing, Ozomgbachi, at the outset of his speech cited reports in some weekly newsmagazines presenting the bill as vendetta by President Olusegun Obasanjo against the NLC.
He had said: "What these suggest is that given the timing of the presentation of this bill, this bill was conceived in anger by the Executive arm as instrument of extracting vengeance." `
The alternative to no strike by organised labour will be protests and rampaging, which will tend towards chaos, whereby nobody will be held accountable and no leaders available with whom government could bargain for a stoppage`
Under fierce contest was the 'no strike' clause, understood by the lawmakers in the House and the Senate, as an outright prohibition of industrial strike and protest. Section 3 of the Amendment bill provided that trade unions seeking registration would be compelled to undertake not to embark on strike at will. Arguments raised against this provision centred on accusing the executive, which drafted it, to warning the Federal Government against the implication of violating the statute of the International Labour Organisation (ILO) to which Nigeria is a signatory.
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