On August 3, 1981, Ronald Reagan, then United States President, sent an unequivocal message to the striking air traffic controllers, that had embarked on an illegal strike, after negotiations on pay increment and shorter working hours had failed. Reagan’s message, delivered without any emotion, was, “tell them when the strike’s over, they don’t have any jobs”. On August 5,1981, Reagan made good his words and fired the 11,359 striking air traffic controllers, who bluntly refused all entreaties to go back to work. In addition, to sacking them, Reagan declared a lifetime ban on rehiring of the sacked air traffic controllers by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), a ban that was only lifted in 1993, by the Bill Clinton administration.
Reagan’s decision to fire the air traffic controllers and decertify their union, rather than negotiate with the union, was a masterstroke in managing the labour unions that were increasingly becoming a law unto themselves. To achieve their demands, nothing was off the table, including resort to violence. An aggressive tactics the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) has clearly copied, especially when the issue has to do with Kaduna state, which Ayuba Wabba has severally vowed to cripple. Luckily, the far-reaching reforms of the Kaduna state public service, the traditional institution, the educational sector, where over 21,000 primary school teachers scandalously failed a competency test administered on them, have readily provided Wabba, who, without doubt, is the worse NLC president, the excuse to flex his flabby muscles.
In the 2015 elections, El-Rufai had in his Restoration Agenda, promised sweeping reforms of the educational sector, improved internally generated revenue and the public service, with its analog and aging workforce that lacked capacity to deliver service, on which he vigorously campaigned. And the good people of Kaduna state, in overwhelmingly electing him, handed him a clear mandate to act.
In Nigeria, no leader has dared call the bluff of labour, even when they are in clear violation of the laws banning them from striking, except Nasir El- Rufai, governor of Kaduna state. By embarking on these reforms in his first term, rather than the second term, he made it clear that he wasn’t scared of electoral defeat. It is worth noting that in Nigeria, most governors only attempt reforms of key institutions in their second term, due to fear of electoral consequences. The overall effect of on the country are missed opportunities, as the governors hardly ever have sufficient time to see the reforms to their logical conclusion. To compound the problem, most often than not, their successors, for political correctness and cheap popularity, usually dismantle them.
While other governors are too scared of taking on the NLC, El-Rufai in his spates with the NLC has scored several major victories and settled some fundamental issues, essentially as it relates to the right of employers, the unions and of the workers, to declare and to participate in a strike. The NLC, which hitherto behaved like it’s above the law, has definitely taken note of this reality. Presently, the National Association of Resident Doctors (NARD) are on their usual strike, due to poor pay, but the Kaduna state branch has wisely stayed away from the usual solidarity strike, because very early in the day, the Kaduna state government had made the point, that they can’t, especially when there is no labour dispute between them, and that if they do, it will be an unlawful strike action that will and did indeed attract grave consequences, the no work, no pay rule.
In 2017, the Kaduna State University (KASU) branch of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), as is customary, embarked on an illegal solidarity strike. Very swiftly, the no work, no pay rule was triggered. The government official position was that the “Kaduna state government is not affected, or bound by any dispute, disagreement or agreement ASUU may have with the federal government. As a sub-national entity, the Kaduna state government is separate from the federal government of Nigeria. The constitution of Nigeria clearly attests to this”. It went on to stress, “It is an anomaly that employees can be on strike without declaring a dispute with their employer. It bears restating that Nigeria is a federation of states, and no trade union can alter this federal reality by imposing on an employer state government the terms that federal employees have agreed with the federal government”. It was a lesson learnt the hard way.
In spite of the NLC’s total blockade of the state, waging physical and psychological assault on Kaduna citizens, restraining workers from accessing their work place, shutting down electricity, which endangered military equipment (there were fears of bombs in key military formations going off), denying citizens access to healthcare, actions which certainly do not qualify by any stretch of imagination as pro-people, the various protests by NLC have been futile as that changed nothing, except for the media headlines it generated for Wabba and his friends.
The NLC owes Ngige lots of thanks for helping it wriggle out of the tight position it had boxed itself in. But it certainly won’t be happy with the outcome of the mediation by the Federal Ministry of Labour, which upheld the rights of Kaduna state government to right size, its position that it’s not elected to pay only salary and more, fundamentally, the right of other citizens to benefit from resources accruing to the state. In fact, it reemphasided the right of state government to set the minimum entry qualifications for its public servants.
By setting up the Justice Ishaq Bello Commission of Inquiry on the violent protests by the NLC and its affiliates during the “warning strike” of 16th to 19th May 2021, El- Rufai is once again pointing the way forward in how the excesses and increasing recklessness of the NLC can be checked. Without doubt, the protests endangered National security and was a clear violation of the laws prohibiting certain categories of the public service from going on strike. Did the NLC exceed its boundaries, was it right using coercion to enforce the strike, was the strike a breach of the Miscellaneous Offences Act and the Trade Union Act, was it right to disrupt the operations of banks and other private business whose staff and customers didn’t have any industrial dispute with the NLC? These are some of the questions the Hon. Justice Ishaq Bello Commission of Inquiry will provide answers to. It’s important that the other states take an interest in the proceedings.
The “advice” to the state government to pay appropriate benefits by the Bi-partite committee is to “give” labour something to gloat about, because the Kaduna state government has been paying. What labour and some pensioners want is for the state government to abandon its queue policy, the “First in-First out”, which simply means first to retire, first to be paid. Labour, in its usual self centeredness will only be satisfied if El-Rufai short circuits the policy, to abandon those that retired in 2017 for those that retired in 2021. But despite the hues and cries, the El-Rufai administration has paid N13 billion out of the inherited N15billion in pension liabilities.
Ngige must abandon his laborious argument that the strike was precipitated by the breach in communication, because it is far from the reality. The fact is that the Wabba led NLC is opposed to dialogue, which is understandable because of its political entanglements. And the reason at the slightest “hint of labour crisis” in Kaduna state, Wabba would have declared a strike, while consistently closing its eyes to many states that have bluntly refused to implement the new minimum wage and are, in fact, not paying the old minimum wage.
There is no doubt, that Kaduna state government, by its willingness to take on the NLC, has tremendously checked the rascality of these grossly misinformed unionists, who believe it’s a law unto itself, and consequently taken its right to strike to very ridiculous levels.
Ado writes from Kaduna.
