The Nigeria labour Congress,!NLC) says the industrial action it planned for Tuesday in Rivers State though suspended, followed its process of consultation in first and second instances before confrontation.
NLC President,Ayuba Wabba,stated this on Tuesday evening in an interview on National Television.
Ayuba said the Union exhausted all chanels for understanding including writing mails but all efforts ended in futility,which was why it considered the option of confrontation in a bid to draw attention to the plight of workers in Rivers State.
” To be specific this is the third visit I have made to Rivers State.Because in labour circle we believe in first consultation, second consultation, before you now begin to do confrontation.
” The first visit we came,we saw the governor,and commitments were made. And on the basis of the commitments,, we didn’t think it was necessary to do any documentation.The second visit,the same thing. I came personally with the President of TUC. when the issue began to escalate and we also had dialogue with the governor and he made the same commitments And follow up to all of these were official communications like letters when we found out that those processes were not yielding the desired results and issues were escalating,we wrote several letters about five ,,the last one we said we were dissatisfied with the entire process we also comnunicated But the governor told us Yesterday (Monday) because of covid he has not been able to access his mails .but we also reminded him that most of the times we use other means to communicate to government officials.And so clearly speaking we do consultations ,we open channels of communications .it is when all of these fail, we now begin to do confrontation and it was like a matter of last resort because we never had any response from the letters that were written including the decision that wss taken by the Central Working Commitee of the NLC on the third of September to actually proceed on the protest.”
According to him, protest is a normal process of expressing grievances, And once people are not satisfied ,they can assemble freely and try to express their rights so it is a normal way of workers expressing their grieviances .In the labour law we have picketing, lock out, protests .All of these are enshrined in the labour law universally these are provisions that are supported by International Labour Convention a particular convention 87 and 98 which Nigeria ratified as far back as october1964 under a denocratic government ,so we must respect those laws and provisions so that workers can continue to work in dignity and in respect “.
Ayuba said the NLC is an independent organisation that represents workers interest adding that a tripatite istructure is being put in place to interface with the government for a collective bargain.
The labour President expressed optimism that having sigbed agreenent at that level,certainly implementation is a done deal.
The agreement between the organised labour and government include,Payment of minimum wage,settlement of pensions and gratuities, opening of sealed NLC secretariat in Port Harcourt, and release of check off dues to union leaders.
