THE FUTURE OF TRADE UNION MOVEMENMENT IN NIGERIA

THE FUTURE OF TRADE UNION MOVEMENMENT IN NIGERIA Before the 1978 Labour Reform, which created only one centre of Trade Unions, there were three centres, differed by their political, ideological and international affiliations. However, the differences served very well for militant Trade Union actions and radical progressive response to workers problems. Again, their differences became useful in labour decisive and fast intervention in a struggle for democracy and generally in the politics of Nigeria. But with the abolition of the centres and the decreeing of the centralization of the trade union organisations, although the different political and ideological tendencies continued to show up in their industrial relation practices up to sometime, along the way, it became overwhelmingly dominated by bureaucrartism, opportunism, self-centreness and careerism. With these problems, it would bring many questions by those who care as to how would the Nigerian Labour Movement confront a new set of challenges arising out of globalization. In particular, there is increasing growth of informal sector in the economy, of mass unemployment, of many self-employed workers, of collapse of industry and rapid growth of the service sector, of a new work paradigm by major enterprises and of the pressures on the economy to compete in the global market. The ultimate outcome of this development in the economy is the decline of the traditional working class and the increasing growth of “New Working poor/class” There is no doubt that the trade union movement both in its structure and organisation as well as orientation ought to be renewed to meet these challenges. As Nigeria is part of the global market politics and economy, there is no logic to stick to the traditional method of trade unionism, which as I said above breeds bureaucratism, opportunism, self-centreness and careerism, obstructing the energies of the new working poor and the unemployed for changes in Nigeria’s politics and economy (as seen in the many anti-petroleum price increase in recent time). The advent of democracy is expected to open up new opportunities and thought for the labour movement to produce new ideas and programmes, which would revitalize the movement to meet the new challenges in the economy. However, the failure to do this has allowed the Federal Government to propose undemocratic labour reform bill, which though has contained the needed decentralization of the trade union movement, but has contained other clauses, which would render the desired decentralization of today impotent and useless. The purpose of this project is to organize discussion, debate, research and documentation which will enable the trade union movement to refocus its attention towards revitalization of the movement to meet the new challenge of today. This can be done by among other means: v Round-table discussions v Public lectures v Workshops v Conducting of researches v Documentation of the experiences of other neo-liberal societies. M.M. Yusif 2004