- Both unions have held separate engagements with the Federal Government since the NLC’s two-day warning strike held earlier this month
The seeming bickering in Organised Labour is coming to the open as the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) on Monday expressed misgivings to the refusal of the Trade Union Congress of Nigeria (TUC) to participate in a two-day warning strike two weeks ago and their public denunciation of the strike, saying a trade union cannot pull out of an industrial action it did not initiate, .
NLC President, Joe Ajaero, spoke on Channels Television’s Politics Today, hours after a meeting between the Federal Government and the NLC to avert an indefinite strike which ended in a deadlock.
The NLC is demanding that the federal government address the consequences of petrol price hikes, review the minimum wage, provide a workable roadmap to the CNG alternative, fix the country’s refineries, and pay lecturers’ salary arrears.
Shortly after the Minister of Labour and Employment, Simon Lalong, finished the meeting with NLC, he went into another parley with the TUC.
Since the hike in fuel prices which took effect with the removal of fuel subsidy, NLC and TUC have held separate engagements with the Federal Government, which is quite unusual.
But reacting to the separate meeting, NLC President said that “from what you can see from our last warning strike, you see that we can do it alone.”
Asked if the NLC does not need the TUC, Ajaero stated: “We can work independently. We can work jointly when we agree.
“But the NLC will not take, under our watch, if we give a strike notice and then a union that didn’t give a strike notice says they are backing out of a strike that they didn’t call for.
“TUC can give their strike notice and go ahead with their notice. NLC can give their strike notice and go ahead with their notice.”
Ajaero however stated that if TUC gives a strike notice, the NLC would not say it is not a part of it “because they didn’t even say they were part of it in the first instance.”
According to him, those are things being streamlined; “and I think that maybe the Ministry is enjoying it (our working separately).”