ay 1 came and went; and there was no announcement on National Minimum Wage – despite Organised (?) Labour’s clamour for it. Like the toothless hunting dogs they have become, Labour leaders in various states, including those not paying N30,000 per month now, were reduced to begging instead of demanding for workers’ rights to a living wage. Politicians can afford to treat Labour with the contempt they deserve because Nigerian Labour movement has become an expensive joke – which workers should not find amusing. The leadership of the largest Labour group, the Nigerian Labour Congress, NLC, is so confused; they cannot seem to decide if they are political party leaders or union men. Members of a union group are united mainly by the economic and social welfare of the workers they are elected to represent.
n my elective course on Collective Bargaining as an undergraduate studying Economics in the USA, from 1964 to 1968, I was struck by the fact that the unions, created by the left-leaning Democratic Party, were led by conservative elements; who were more Republican in their politics. While Presidents Kennedy and Johnson were pushing for more black civil rights and the right of black Americans to vote and the Affirmative Action Programme, the Labour leaders, all white, were not in support. Lyndon Johnson only got them to support his Great Society Programme from 1964-68 by granting them more powers to strike than previous governments did. Johnson offered a package from which nobody in support could remove anything. It was a matter of all or nothing. The unions have never contemplated getting directly involved in politics and the choice of flag-bearers for political parties. Every member was/is at liberty to choose for himself or herself. NLC’s involvement with the Labour party was a blunder from which it should retreat. Otherwise, it will lead workers into a blind alley in the delicate negotiations for an acceptable minimum wage.
