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‘Workers should keep their heads and enjoy later’
Soji-Eze Fagbemi,
Abuja updated: Wednesday 13-05-2009
Adetokunbo Kayode,
Labour
MinisterAt the May Day celebration, Nigerian workers were not happy with the Federal Government due to what they termed insensitivity to their plight. They made a declaration to commence protest rallies across the country, starting this week. The Labour Minister, Prince Adetokunbo Kayode spoke with journalists on the consequences of this and government position. Excerpts:
How did you feel when you were posted here?
I have my doubts whether any person who is worthy to be a minister in the Federal Cabinet would really ever want to be a Minister of Labour because the Labour Ministry is not strong outside and that is the impression I have always had. It is not glamorous. It is not main stream. It is not a ministry you would want to wake up early in the morning and pray to God to be posted to.
That is the impression I have always had. The average Nigerian does not really care about the Ministry of Labour. He feels that it doesn’t impact on his life. The impression and perception is that the ministry does not really impact on the lives of the average person. So, nobody gives a damn about it. That impression seems to have come out of the fact that the ministry is a place where unions want to strike, or labour wants to fight government and government is going to beg them or help them solve the problem. The ministry is just like a department of fire fighters.
The thing is that I never thought I would go to the Ministry of Labour. In fact, I used to sympathise with my predecessor, my elder brother and friend, Dr Hassan Lawal that he had to face the labour everyday because the fear of the labour union is the beginning of wisdom. Even those of us who were not actively involved then believed that labour should be kept at bay. The impression was that they were people who would always want to cause problem for government or people who like to cause demonstrations, riots and more.
When I was posted to the Ministry of Labour, it was a shocker. That is the truth. Not that I did not expect to be moved. I knew Mr. President could move anybody anytime and since there was going to be a major cabinet reshuffle at that time, it was possible that one could move, but going to Labour was a shocker to me. Incidentally, before the reshuffle took place, the cabinet distributed the schedule of work of ministries because Mr. President had been trying to see how he could restructure the Ministries to make them more efficient, more proactive and in position to key into his vision, particularly implementing the seven-point agenda.
So, they had distributed to Ministers the nature of work of the Ministries and I have looked at it across board. I looked at the Ministries. I looked at Labour. I remember that the work is much more than fire fighting. It is much more than that. It is much more than industrial relations and settling Labour disputes. I found out that they had responsibilities to create jobs in Nigeria. It is the agency in charge of job creation in Nigeria. I found that they also have responsibility for social security scheme in Nigeria which does not exist.
Mr. President had been trying to restructure the ministries to make them more efficient and proactive, and to be in position to key into his vision, particularly in implementing his seven - point agenda. When I looked at the brief on the Labour Ministry, I found out that apart from industrial relations and settling labour disputes, the ministry has responsibilities to create jobs in Nigeria and it also has responsibility for social security scheme, which does not exist in Nigeria.
How then are you going to address the myriads of problems posing as hurdles to the labour sector?
I have discovered that the whole gamut of poverty alleviation programme is actually embedded in the Labour Ministry. In the last few weeks I spent in the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, I started emphasising how we can really use culture as a means of empowerment. For example, the National Cultural Festival held yearly, people prepare for it, tailors sew clothes, weavers make mats, woodworkers work and everybody is working.
For every work you do, you get some pay and thereafter, things produced are sold. It is an industry on its own and many countries, especially the United Kingdom, earn billions of dollars from their cultural industries. So, when I was posted to this ministry, that vision just came back to me in respect of my understanding. I then told them that trade unions are very important. They are your partners and not your enemies. So, this mentality of fire fighting must stop.
You only fight a fire if you allow the fire to light in the first place. If there is no fire, there will be nothing to fight. So, I said that we must have a partnership with the Labour. Secondly, after we must have done that, labour issues, fighting and settling will be our number four agenda; one is about job creation, two is social responsibility, three is productivity-efficiency in the system, to make labour relations good.We will eliminate areas of communication gap, which is the principal source of the problem.
We shall engage in continuous labour orientation to enable the labour know that it has a bigger stake in this matter. This is the perspective I took initially and I think I have been trying since then to push that agenda so that everything keys into the seven-point agenda, which is all about the security and welfare of the people.
A year after Nigerian workers have demanded salary increase, it has not been met. What are you doing about this?
I am a worker, having come from the private sector and if I do not work, I do not eat. If you close down your chambers, you do not get a brass farthing. So, I know the value of work and labour.
Mr. President, like every reasonable Nigerian does, and is very concerned. Every worker is entitled to a good pay. He sympathises very much with Labour and their demands for a good pay. The problem is that the economy is impacted seriously by the global environment. It is very serious. It is not a joke. It is a national problem. It has nothing to do with a political party in power. When it rains, it beats everybody. This is a global recession. It is not a problem caused by Yar’Adua.
You can see that he is trying to push the problem down through probity, accountability, rule of law and the implementation of each of the seven point agenda one after the other. However, we all must be ready to tighten our belts in the next one or two years. The economy is in a bad shape.
This is why government has constituted the job and skill funds. Presently, we just want to keep our heads above water. For the moment, all Nigerian workers should be ready to keep their heads above water and enjoy later. My message is that the Nigerian worker should be patient because we are in the middle of a global economic crisis. All of us are affected. Workers should work with government to ensure that we come out of this crisis stronger and better.
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‘Only political office holders have gained from this govt’
Soji-Eze Fagbemi,
Abuja
Comrade Olaitan President, Association of Nigerian Senior Civil Servants (ANSCS), Comrade Olakunle Olaitan, spoke with LabourToday on the plight of Nigerian workers and their unmet aspirations, warning that the Nigerian workers have the capacity to confront the government as it happened in 1882 in Chicago, USA, which gave birth to what is today known as Workers’ Day. Excerpts:
What would you say are the gains for the workers in the current dispensation?
I want to say that workers have not gained much. Those who can say that they have gained something substantial from the system are the political office holders, those that are in government and they know this because they hold the yam and the knife.
So they know where it benefits them, but as for the workers it has always been suffering and smiling.
What is your focus now?
The main focus is for government to understand that workers in this country, and particularly the public servants where I belong, are not comfortable. We are far from being comfortable; the wages that are being paid to us today are far from taking us home. The take - home pay and or living wage cannot take you to the bus - stop not to talk of your home.
This means that we are faced with a pyramid of problems here and there everyday without any cushioning effect and it was high time the government understood this and come to terms with the suffering of the teeming public servants and do what is necessary; so that by the time we are celebrating May Day next year, we would be in a position to conveniently say that this year is better than last year.
Looking at the world scenario, the global economic meltdown, how pushy is labour going to be in order to achieve this quest for a living wage?
We cannot claim to be an Island onto ourselves. That much has been responsible for our patience all this while. We have all along been looking at issues holistically, taking into consideration the effect of the global economy that is not favourable, as it affects Nigeria; but then, we must not forget the fact that when the economy was booming, the workers were having the shortest edge of the stick, meaning that nobody ever thought of accommodating the workers within their own calculation.
Of course, we are aware that there is no benevolent capitalist anywhere that would voluntarily want to satisfy the needs of the workers at the expence of his profits or returns. So, be that as it may, you expect them to continue to do this believing that it is going to be business as usual. I want to emphasise that when the economy was booming, the workers were not considered.
As it is today, if there is any change at all, it is insignificant because the power that be are considering reduction of their salary by 20 per cent, but you can tell me, honestly speaking, what does that 20 per cent translate to in terms of naira and kobo, it is still business as usual. I hope they would not push us to that point, a point where we would start to ask them the quantum that would be saved from that 20 per cent and who benefits from that, and of course if that 20 per cent is the true representation of what was on ground.
At a time they considered the economic indices of some other countries, and they believed that the time was ripe for them to jerk up their salary and allowances. They sat down; they awarded themselves jumbo pay without considering the workers. Workers have all along been neglected; we are still where we were several years back.
If they are telling the truth, and are saying that the global meltdown is not favourable to the economy, then let everybody sincerely drop what he his earning and go back to the status quo, to the point before they awarded jumbo pay to themselves, so that we can see ourselves as good Nigerians who are ready to sacrifice for the nation. Until they do that, they can’t convince Labour of sincerity in what they are doing. Beyond that, if they are conscious of this thing and do it, then we would hold them in high esteem.
A legislator knows how much his package is every month, so many allowances put together, even drinking allowance. How much of those allowances are available to an average civil servant. The fuel crisis is here with us and that again will translate into high cost of transportation, cost of food and cost of all products in the market will rise but you are still on the same salary and nobody is considering that.
We sat down to reflect on this and asked ourselves who really the government is? Those that are in government are those ministers and others, and we won’t be fair to Mr. President if we continue to heap the whole blame on him, rather, what we shall do is to look at individual ministers, what they are doing that is beneficial as well as detrimental to the system and we will report them to the entire world instead of blaming Mr. President alone.
Last May you demanded for wage increase and as many of you have said, the government, till now, has not called you for negotiation as you advised then. What would you do if by another year government has not satisfied you?
The alternative to peace is war and in the military circle, they believe that the best method of defence is attack but I hope the government will not push us to that extent. We believe that it is only when there is peace we can benefit anything, but where there is war, there will not be any way for negotiation.
That was at the back of our mind from the on-set and that was what has been guiding our demand, operation and thinking generally. But then, it is not that we don’t have the capacity to agitate, go to the street, demonstrate and go on strike. What we are talking about started way back in 1882, during the Chicago imbroglio.
In September last year, the Public Service Joint Negotiating Council (PSJNC) presented our demands to the government and as I am talking with you and as you have rightly put it, they are yet to call us for negotiation and whereby there is no negotiation, it gives room for crisis. We were made to understand that at a point this demand was pushed to the Ministry of Finance, but very unfortunately, the minister, Babalola, threw the thing away that we are not serious.
That is why I said we would hold ministers responsible for their actions and report them back to their principal so that you don’t heap all the blames at the door - step of Mr. President without addressing the source of that problem. September 2008 was several months before the economic meltdown they are talking about.
I believe that if the minister is receiving the ridiculous salary the workers are getting today, he would not be comfortable holding that job. That is why at the fullest of time, we would start to engage them one after the other so that the country would know who is really working and who is busy cornering the public money.
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