The announcement by the Anambra State leadership of the Trade Union Congress of Nigeria and its affiliate bodies on Friday, 7th of October, 2011, of the suspension of the three-week long strike action embarked upon by the Anambra State organized labour leaderships, is a welcome development- said the leaderships of Intersociety, CLO & Human Rights Club in their joint statement issued in Onitsha today.
The Peter Okafor-led TUC deserves commendation for seeing reasons with the 5million people of Anambra State on the need to embrace dialogue and save the Anambra children from the hands of the world of crime, propelled by idleness-says Intersociety.
The commendable action of the TUC should be emulated by the Patrick Obianyor-led Anambra NLC. The strike action ab initio is unwarranted and appears to be politically motivated and ill conceived-says CLO. The Anambra TUC clearly saw the hand-writing on the wall and retreated wisely to avoid facing the wrath of the Anambra public opinion, which weighed heavily against the strike action clearly rooted on wrong premise says Human Rights Club.
We have also been vindicated by the unfolding developments. It is becoming clearer day by day that the strike action ought not to have been embarked upon because the minimum wage implementation did not cause it. The State Labour leadership is even more confused by not knowing why it embarked upon the strike action ab initio.
It initially alleged that the strike action was as a result of the refusal of the Government of Anambra State to implement the National Minimum Wage, but when informed opinions ex-rayed both government and labour positions and found the labour stance too hard, it reprobated and re-christened the strike salary relativity or demand for a general review of salaries across board for workers in the senior reaches of civil service.. It also formulated-the demand that salary increases and allowances granted by federal government to its workers before the minimum wage came into force be extended to the State workforce.
Those affected by the former are about 30 permanent secretaries and directors, who were also provided with a lot of incentives including brown new vehicles (permanent secretaries) and retirement gratuities paid two months after retirement.
It is our firm warning that the Social Contract obligations must never be compromised on the altar of over bloated workers wage bills. Time is running out for the State NLC Leadership to put off its unwarranted and unpopular strike action and embrace constructive dialogue.
Signed:
Emeka Umeagbalasi-Intersociety, Aloysius Attah-CLO, Samuel Njoku-Human Rights Club
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