By Michael Oche
Amidst complaints of increasing cases of exploitation of workers by employers and the infringement on the rights of workers to unionize, there is a renewed call to strengthen collaboration between Trade Unions and Civil society organisations to advocate actions that promote decent work environment.
This formed parts of resolutions reached at a two-day workshop organized by the Solidarity Centre aimed at providing support for effective enforcement of workers’ rights on freedom of association and collective bargaining through labor and CSOs collaborations.
Our Correspondent reports that in recent times, there are complaints of increasing cases of outsourcing and contract staffing, which discourages workers’ rights to unionise and rights to collective bargaining.
Trade unions alleged that many of the employers and business owners intimidate and threaten workers with outright sack should they insist on their rights to belong to an association.
“One of the major objectives of this training is to talk about labour laws and how we can get the government to hold employers accountable,” Sonny Ogbuehi, Solidarity Centre Country Programme Director stated at the commencement of the two-day workshop
He explained that over the years, the Centre has provided support in building the skills of trade unions to organize workers
So we need to figure out in Nigeria how we can hold employers accountable. There are a lot of violators of labour laws in the country that believe they are above the law. So that is one of the goals of this meeting. We need to find ways to entrench accountability in our labour space,” he said.
According to the Country Director, “In 2021, we held our first organising academy. It was for the NLC; where we provided skills on organising, recruiting leaders, identifying issues, skills that workers need to grow their unions and power. And after that organising academy, we did support organising campaigns in five sectors. And even though the period of organising was too short: it was about two months, we were able to organise a thousand workers.
“And then recently, we did the same thing again. We had the organising academy with TUC and NLC, and we provided similar skills. So it is a good thing we are doing this.”
Participants at the workshop identified the need to start building capacity of trade union leaders as well as strategic collaboration with Civil society partners in the quest to improve working conditions for workers.
“Trade Unions cannot continue to work in silos. Beyond the traditional trade Unions tactics and strategies, there is need to bring in pro-workers CSOs, lawyers and media to drive the advocacy,” Jaye Gaskia, convener of Campaign for Transformative Governance (CFTG) said in his remarks.
The workshop also witnessed the development of strategies that will promote compliance and enforcement of existing labour laws that discourages outsourcing and casualisation.
The workshop also emphasized need to advocate campaigns to encourage the strengthening of the labour inspectorate department of the ministry of labour and employment.
Participants at the workshop with drawn from the Media, International Lawyers Assisting Workers Network (ILAW Network), Civil Society organization and Trade Union Congress of Nigeria (TUC)
