Labour crisis: ULC not faction of NLC, has all requirements to get registration – Ajaero

The pioneer president of the newly launched United Labour Congress (ULC), Comrade Joe Ajaero, has declared that the new labour centre has more than the required number of affiliate trade unions to get registration as a formidable labour centre in the country.

Besides, he pointed out that the ULC is not a faction of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) but a mega arrangement among many trade unions who cut across the NLC, TUC and other unaffiliated trade unions to form a labour centre.

He added that the new movement has a reasonable number of affiliates who already pulled out of the NŁC and the Trade Union Congress as well as many other trade unions who were not affiliated to any before.

Ajaero, the General Secretary of the National Union of Electricity Employees and former Deputy President of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), led the President of the National Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers (NUPENG), Comrade Igwe Achese, and other unions to launched a new labour centre, after the protracted crisis that followed the NLC delegates’ conference cannot be amicably resolved.

Speaking to journalists in Abuja on the reasons behind the launch of a third labour centre in Nigeria, even when there is the need for them to come together, Ajaero said the only solution to the crisis that rocked the NLC is the formation of a new labour centre, different from the NLC and the Trade Union Congress.

“I think we should stop being fixated. The solution to the crisis is what has happened. We have sat down, we thought in various ways about it. How do we do this? We resolved to forget about it and forge ahead. We discovered that even the people we are equally operating with will not agree on any of those issues we have decided jointly,” he said.

He argued that there were four labour centres in Nigeria before 1978, but for Olusengun Obasanjo military government, who came to force everybody to belong to only one centre, adding that “it is not the culture of Nigeria labour movement to have a single labour centre but for the military.”

Asked to name those trade unions who are affiliating to the ULC to make its registration a centre possible; Ajaero described that as immaterial, adding that those who are kicking against their registration should not be bothered about that until the centre is either registered or refused registration.

He said: “I want you to leave that. If we are 11 unions and we want to register and the law says 12, they will not register us. If I know that it is 12 and I am going there with 11, you can see the foolishness on my part. It then means no one will listen to me. That is why I say we have to de-emphasize that area.”

He, however, hinted that more than 12 unions pulled out of the NLC alone to join the new movement, while substantial unions also left the TUC to join ULC, in addition with some unions who have not been affiliated to either NLC or TUC before.

Therefore, Ajaero added that the NLC and the TUC cannot fight them because the ULC was not an affiliate of NLC or TUC, because it has many other unions who were unaffiliated to them in the new movement.

He said: “But I am telling you, more than 12 unions left from the NLC, and I am telling you that unions from the TUC and unions that are not affiliated to any for now are into this. This is not a faction of NLC, there are unions from TUC, there are unions that are not affiliated to NLC and TUC and there are those unions from the NLC that pulled out, which I can count up to 12 or more.

“They now come together, to have a kind of mega arrangement to form this centre. If somebody is saying it is not up to 12, you allow the people who are responsible to count and know whether those unions are registered or not; because it is the same organization that registered those unions that we are taking these names to; when they look at their records and they were not registered, they drop them.

“So, if we do this, I think we will be reducing tension. Some people said they are not up to the numbers or you are up to the numbers. Like I was trying to explain to you, this is not a faction of NLC having a labour centre.

“Even if we are two or three, let them reject it based on that number. Like other conditions you asked, we are trying to present them, if there are other conditions that they felt we have not met, they can reject it.”

He said the ideology of the new ULC is to put the workers at the centre of their activities; adding, “the workers first, which means if the worker is hungry, it will affect us. If he doesn’t has any salary increase, it will affect us. First and foremost, there is no other thing that is bringing us to this business if not the workers. So, that is the ideology, that is what will drive us and we would resist neo-liberalism because it has killed jobs in Nigeria, it has killed a lot of people. When jobs are killed, people die.”