The Struggle for Minimum Wage in Osun State

It will be recalled that about two weeks ago, workers, arising from their congresses, resolved to embark on a four-day warning strike to drive home their demand for implementation of the nationally legislated N18, 000 minimum wage, which the Aregbesola government has stubbornly refused to implement. Indeed, workers have held several congresses to call the attention of the government to the need to fulfill its promise of implementing the minimum wage when the revenue of the state improves. On the contrary, the government has been using various dubious strategies including claiming to have implemented a N19, 001 minimum wage to setting up a Wage Commission, whatever that means. In fact, since 2011 when workers went on a three-month strike to compel the government to implement the new wage, the government, in a dubious propagandist manner it is now known for, after some ridiculous increase on workers salaries claimed to be paying N19, 001 minimum wage. In the real sense, what were added to salaries of a majority of workers were between N5, 000 and N10, 000. The most brazen attempt of government at avoiding the payment of a real wage and crippling labour movement is the dragging of workers and their unions to the National Industrial Court with the aim of rubbishing the new minimum wage by claiming that minimum wage is for the least paid worker, and not all workers. This again failed, as the government was directed to implement agreement it signed with workers, rather than try to revise the new wage law.

Not satisfied with this, the government has gone a step further to break the labour movement by buying over labour leaders, and disorienting the rest, who are themselves half-hearted. Thus, the statements credited to some labour leaders claiming to represent workers of some unions - NULGE, ASCSN and MHWUN - that they did not support the now-botched four-day warning strike, and the subsequent bankrupt statement credited to national secretary of Joint Public Service Negotiating Council (JPSNC) on the invitation of the state government, to the effect that labour centres (that is, NLC and TUC) do not have the right to fight for workers, call workers to congress, or workers taking action on the basis of a congress, are not accidental. They reflect the pinnacle of the treacherous attempt of the Aregbesola government at crippling the labour movement in the state, in order to continue its grandstanding. It surely found easy collaborators in the spineless and unprincipled labour leaders who are prepared to sell their birthright for visas to London. This itself is aided by the bureaucratic manner the unions are run, where labour leaders are not subject to the democratic control of and probing by workers. Moreover, the failure of the national leadership of labour movement in fighting to a logical conclusion the implementation of the N18, 000 minimum wage across the board and at all levels, both public and private sectors, contributed immensely to the current travail of workers in the state, and indeed across the country.

THE TREACHERY OF THE RENEGADE LABOUR LEADERS

The renegade labour leaders in their various statements claimed, among other things, that the current Joint Negotiating Council (JNC) Chair, Mr Adejumo, in the state had overstayed his term of office and cannot preside over meetings on minimum wage. If this is true, it is unfortunate, and further reflects the bureaucratic manner in which the unions are run, which has made many so-called labour leaders to turn holding union offices into a career because of the pecuniary benefits and state patronage they get. But this excuse of the renegade labour leaders is only a cover for their own betrayal. Are they just realising the fact that the JNC chair has retired now, when they have signed joint statements and memos with the same person? How does the issue of who is the JNC chair stop labour leaders from defending their members' right to a decent wage? Why use the occasion of declaration of a warning strike to raise such issue? Interestingly, these are labour leaders who have not called any press conference or issued any statement on salient issues affecting their members but were quick to organize a press conference to condemn a warning strike. They could not even give alternative approach to getting minimum wage implemented, neither did they condemn the government's failure to honour its agreement with workers. But it was comfortable for them to claim that those leading the strike wanted to extort government, as if the implementation of the minimum wage will benefit only the union leaders! When one reads statements like these, one is obliged to ask: how did the labour movement get to this rotten state of affair?

If the treachery of the renegade labour leaders is condemnable, the ridiculous support given this treachery by some national labour leaders is heart-rending. Some labour leaders led by the national secretary of the JPSNC, Mr Omokhuade Marcus, were invited or more appropriately mobilised by the state government, not to address the issue of minimum wage implementation, but to assist the government in identifying which faction of labour leadership to negotiate with. Of course, the government, having been successful in dividing the labour movement leadership in the state, mobilised the more pliable and useable hands in the national labour leadership to drive a final wedge in the labour movement. Otherwise, why would government turn itself into a labour arbitrator? Government knew those it was negotiating with over minimum wage, so the issue of identifying what is happening in the labour movement is self serving. It is only a cover for a more sinister agenda.

Unfortunately for the working people, the government got ready support from some spineless labour leaders. The labour leaders did not of course invite the local leaders to the meeting to sort out the issue internally but rather mobilised themselves to the well fueled government train, not to defend workers' struggle but to stab the struggle in the back. According to the secretary of JPSNC, ‘The NLC, TUC and the JNC have no members. The members belong to the unions. So calling a workers’ assembly for a strike is not known to law. They do not even have right to call workers for that assembly. Only the leadership of the respective unions has the power of attorney to mobilise their workers to attend that gathering.’ He even went further to claim that JPSNC has more power over the central labour unions. This is what you get when labour bureaucracy tries to build its own life out of the union. Not even a word on the struggle of workers. These are labour leaders who have not for once visited the state to support workers' struggle over minimum wage. Interestingly, it is these same national labour leaders (or dealers) that negotiated the N18,000 minimum wage. The question is, of what importance is their intervention to the struggle of workers? No, they only came for hatchet man job. Surely, workers will have to carry out revolution in their unions to retrieve them from deadly bureaucracy!

AREGBESOLA GOVERNMENT IS ANTI-WORKER

The Aregbesola government must have been happy that the little it invested in buying over some labour leaders is yielding profit by postponing indefinitely the implementation of the meager minimum wage. However, this ‘victory’ is at best pyrrhic and will surely be short-lived. Indeed, this action, rather than cowing workers will give them the clear picture of whom they are fighting. The veil of deceit of the administration and its bootlickers among labour leaders is being removed, and workers sooner than later will mobilize with more ferocious energy for total struggle not just for the implementation of the meager minimum wage, but against all anti-poor, anti-worker policies of the government. More than this, the recent underhand dealing of the Aregbesola government with labour leaders in order to scuttle the agitation for the implementation of the minimum wage has further exposed the bankrupt, anti-worker character of the government. It has shown that against all grandstanding and propaganda, the government is not fundamentally different from its predecessors – the Oyinlola and Akande administrations. These regimes are clearly anti-worker. The Aregbesola government is taking these ‘feats’ of its predecessors to a higher level.

Reflecting the perfidy of the government, the Aregbesola administration has not disclaimed the position of workers that the government has earned close to a hundred percent rise in monthly revenue to close to N4 billion since 2011 when the agreement was signed. This is aside other emergency revenue: remittance from NNPC, revenue from excess crude account (which is not captured in the budget), remittance from subsidy fund, etc. On the other hand, the cost of living has hiked with the rise in inflation (put at 12.5 percent CPI by January 2012 from around 10.0 percent few months earlier, according to the statistics bureau), mostly occasioned by criminal hike in fuel price by the Jonathan government in collusion with the same state governments that are now denying workers a living wage. While the Aregbesola government collects subsidy refund from the hiked fuel price hike, workers have to use their meager salaries to subsidize the effect of hike in fuel price.

Of course, the government claimed it cannot commit all its resources on workers alone, but a government that wants to develop the state should know that it cannot do that when workers, who should carry out the so-called development projects, are poorly remunerated. Of course, the government claimed to have given some end-of-the-year bonuses (around 5 percent of total net salaries) to workers, but this once-a-year gesture, while welcome, it seems the government is using it to avoid paying a living wage. Otherwise, how can a government that claims to be committed to workers’ welfare finds it difficult to commit less than 30 percent of revenue to workers’ poverty wages? On the other hand, politicians and so-called ‘technocrats’ in government are earning several multiples of workers’ salaries for doing practically nothing in comparison to workers’ responsibilities. While government claimed it does not have enough resources to make workers live above poverty line, local government council executives, who do nothing than signing revenue cheques and letters of identification, earn hundreds of thousands of naira, while advisers and assistants, whose jobs, aside praise singing the administration in the media and on social networks, are mere duplication of civil servants’ responsibilities are living large. This is just tips of the iceberg of various prodigious projects where the state resources are being squandered. If the government can get enough resources to pay its fat-cat officials and embark on job-for-the-boys projects, it should have no problem paying workers a nationally legislated wage.

AREGBESOLA GOVERNMENT AND ITS DUBIOUS DEVELOPMENTAL PROJECTS

The government will want to brandish its so-called ‘developmental’ projects as excuse for not paying adequate wage to its workforce; but this is only a ruse. While of course some projects are being carried out, the reality is that these projects are generally haphazard, costly, and elitist, and have not fundamentally changed the living conditions of the working and poor people in the state. For instance in the education sector where the government claimed to have carried out massive reform, the situation is still hopeless as public primary and secondary schools are still in their poor conditions with no functional laboratories, libraries, sport facilities, etc. Moreover, fees in the state tertiary institutions have not fundamentally changed from the obnoxious level they were raised to by the inglorious era of Oyinlola/PDP, while lecturers in the state owned tertiary institutions are currently on strike over conditions of service. Public primary and secondary schools are still in their poor conditions as the so-called ‘massive’ school renovations only apply to about ten schools, out of over two thousand public primary and secondary schools in the state. If it takes government almost three years to renovate ten schools out of over two thousands, how many years will it take it to renovate most of the schools that are now in terrible physical conditions; nay provision of modern facilities for teaching.

Potable pipe-borne water supply in the state can simply be termed as non-existent, more than two years after the government came to power. Road rehabilitation has not applied to more than 70 percent of the local roads that are plied by most of the citizens, even with the current debt-financed rehabilitation projects in local governments. The local hospitals have not received any substantial improvement in terms of expansion, deployment of modern facilities and recruitment of adequate medical staff. Job creation in the state has only meant slave-labour as the OYES, youth volunteers employed by the government are paid poverty wage (of less than N10, 000) with no right to unionise or seek for improved working conditions. In fact, they are disengaged every two years with no disengagement benefits. Of course, the governor was quoted some months ago that more than 80 percent of the disengaged volunteers have been gainfully employed. Unfortunately, the governor did not tell the public whether it was the state government that employed them, or it was the N10, 000 monthly stipends that the volunteers used to get themselves employed. Yet, the state government claimed to have saved N35 billion.

While of course government cannot solve all the problems in a jiffy neither are we saying that only the state government can improve living conditions of working people, suffice to say that with judicious and democratic use of state resources, there can be enough resources to pay workers adequately and improve the conditions of the people substantially. For instance, by reducing the huge salaries and overhead for political office holders and so-called ‘technocrats’, enough resources can be realized to provide improved infrastructures. Furthermore, with massive equipping and refurbishment, public work ministry can conveniently undertake various government projects including road construction, school renovation, mass housing, etc. By putting execution of public projects under the democratic watch, supervision and management of workers, communities and professionals, the bureaucratic bottlenecks associated with public project execution in a capitalist economy can be avoided. This will also provide gainful, secure and decent employment to tens of thousands of youths. On the contrary, the government, on the basis of its pro-capitalist and neo-liberal orientation will not do these as such will reduce the huge amount going to the coffer of political patrons. The government is committed to capitalist political investors who have continued to hold the society by the jugular. This is why we are in an era of ‘government has no business in business’, even when the so-called private businesses are going under and are blighted by corruptive tendencies at faster rates than even bureaucratically run state enterprises and agencies. All of these have shown that against attempt by government at using the issue of developmental projects to deny workers adequate wage, there are genuine alternative of massively developing society, even with meager available resources.

As said earlier, workers, either in Osun State or elsewhere are watching with keen interest, the treachery of both Aregbesola government, and their own labour leaders (who are really dealers), and they shall rise again, this time bye passing the rotten officialdom of their unions. More than this, they shall rebuild their unions on genuine democratic and revolutionary basis. They shall realize the need to build, along with other oppressed people, their own revolutionary political alternative to the ruling parties of privatization, commercialization, and corruption.

* Kola Ibrahim is State Secretary, Socialist Party of Nigeria (SPN)