N70,000 allowance: You cannot negotiate for TUC, Osifo tells NLC

FILE: TUC leader Festus Osifo

The President of the Trade Union Congress, Festus Osifo, has disagreed with his Nigerian Labour Congress counterpart, Joe Ajaero, over the authority of the NLC to negotiate salaries and allowances on behalf of Nigerian workers, insisting that the TUC must be involved in such negotiations.

Osifo said the NLC could not negotiate on behalf of the TUC without its participation or consultation, describing the agreement on the N70,000 transport allowance recently approved by President Bola Tinubu as an aberration.

The TUC president spoke on Monday while appearing as a guest on Channels Television’s The Morning Brief, amid the disagreement between the two labour centres over the negotiations with the Federal Government.

“Listening to Ajaero again today, I really pity the Labour movement and the quality of leaders that have been inflated on the NLC.

“As I listened to Ajaero today, I was wondering if it is the same NLC that produced the likes of Adams Oshiomole, Hassan Sumonu, Ayuba Wabba and so on.

“There is nowhere in ILO regulations that says a trade centre cannot negotiate for its members. It is not there! It is just that if you are going to the ILO, it is tripartite- the labour, government and the employers. And in describing that, it means that the list of the TUC members is joined together with that of the NLC and submitted to the Ministry of Labour, who forwards it to the ILO.

“In that case, the two bodies must come together. We are not contesting the fact that NLC has more affiliates.

“But what we are saying is that you have about 60 affiliates while we have about 40. You cannot! You cannot negotiate for a body that is represented, for a body that has a trade union. You cannot negotiate for them on their behalf! It is not there anywhere!

“Yes, if we go to negotiations- I sit down, you sit down, and we agree”.

Osifo challenged Ajaero to produce the International Labour Organisation regulation document which, according to him, authorised either of the labour unions to negotiate on behalf of the other.

“He should show me in the ILO Regulations where it says one party is going to negotiate without the other one being there or consulted. He should show me! He should show Nigerians!

“ILO doctrine is that when you have more affiliates, and you are going for one of their events, it is not correct that the most represented will go and negotiate on behalf of the other one when the unions have their own umbrella.

“Let Ajaero send a document to you that proves that! It cannot be found anywhere!

“He talked about the JNC (Joint Public Sector Negotiating Council). I don’t truly think Ajaero has read the JNC constitution. I don’t truly think he knows what the JNC means.

“Yes, you have a Masters in 1990. You cannot use a solution of yesterday to attack today’s problem.

“And that is why in industrial relations, you need to keep updating, retooling and relearning.

“First, the JNC means that when there are issues in the public sector, the JNC looks at it”.

The TUC president also disputed the position that the meeting at which the N70,000 transport allowance was agreed upon represented a general agreement by members of the Joint Public Sector Negotiating Council.

“But that meeting that took place was not the Council meeting. The Minister is not a member of the Council. Ajaero is not a member of the Council. The Council even has a quorum and the number of persons that must be seated to form a quorum. But at the end of the day, that meeting was not a JNC meeting. The members of JNC were not there!

“Again, if you see the release that was sent out by those three bodies, you will discover that after the last minimum wage, we got about 33 per cent increment, and how does that work? Because from N30,000, we got N70,000.

“What you are supposed to do is that JNC will have to sit down and apply consequential adjustments.

“You know what Ajaero used JNC to do? Ajaero sent JNC a questionnaire and asked them to apply N40,000 each to Nigerian workers.

“So they took N40,000, which is the difference between N30,000 and N70,000, and applied it across board. That is why the federal workers today are earning abysmally poor.

“But I attacked him! I went to his office and told him that ‘Ajaero, this is wrong!’ What you used JNC to do is fundamentally wrong!”