Nigerian workers can’t afford bank loans —CANMPSSAN President

Comrade Segun David, President, Chemical and Non-Metallic Products Senior Staff Association of Nigeria (CANMPSSAN), speaks on the issues affecting the sector and its challenges, most especially the issue of expatriate quota and the effects of COVID-19.

The theme of this year’s May Day was centred around COVID-19, which is ‘Social Economic Crisis: The Challenges for Decent Jobs, Social Protection and Welfare’. In what ways has COVID-19 impacted Nigerian workers?

COVID-19 in so many ways has brought some positive and negative things to workers. Some employers used the opportunity to better a lot of workers while some did otherwise. Some of them did so many things that were inimical to the growth of workers under the pretence of COVID-19. For instance, you see a lot of companies downsizing arbitrarily and indiscriminately, while some had gone ahead to reduce the salary of workers. Now that things have improved reasonably, those salaries have not been reversed. Also, we saw some companies last month declared huge profits than they usually made in time past. But most of them till date have not done salary appraisals, salary increase for two years running and yet they are declaring huge profits. These profits if I may say, part were gotten as a result of suppression of workers because some of them did not allow salary increase, some employees retired and there were no replacements, they froze promotions and in all these, they announced huge profits, and did not even consider the workers that worked for them to make these profits.

What are the challenges in your sector?

The Chemical and Non-Metallic sector was among the worst hit during the pandemic, and we are still not completely out of the woods yet. There were cases where salaries were reduced by various percentages and cases of redundancy declared, only for the companies to come back and reinvest in the same plant and bring in casual workers, which is anti-labour. In the sector, employers see the pandemic as an avenue to cash out on the frailty of the workers and helplessness of the workforce in order to make more profit.

How has your union been able to deal with these challenges, especially with those companies making life difficult for workers?

We still have a couple of companies now that we are having challenges with, but because we are toeing the line of peace, we are being careful to see that we resolve issues amicably. For instance, we had a very long battle with one of the companies in the sector, Nycil, and until we got to the Ministry of Labour, where the office of the minister had to wade in before we were able to resolve and settle the matter among others. Also, while the Federal Government in its own way tried to release palliatives and loans for workers, even though they were questionable, employers in their own way did not make the work environment conducive for workers to access the palliatives and loans provided by the government.

For instance, we have tried to review our procedural agreement and the condition of service, which we discovered has not been reviewed since 2007, and employers are cashing in on this to shortchange workers. Among our plans are for the expatriates where there are double standards. They have different years of retirement while the indigenous workers have different years of retirement.

For the expatriates, they’ll give them long years of retirement, claiming that it is what they have in their country and for the indigenous workers, they have lower years of retirement. Most of the companies have been reluctant to adhere to the government’s mandatory 60 years for retirement age. I believe the union will treat the matter dispassionately and bring up a good resolution on that.

The other issue is on workers’ welfare. We know that many companies shy away from giving their employees loans, considering their poor remuneration. Nigerian workers can hardly afford bank loans considering the collateral involved as their remuneration is very poor. What is the benefit of working in an organisation if you cannot get a loan? No wonder, most employees, after few years of retirement, fall ill and some die. As president of CANMPSSAN, I will ensure that some of these policies are reversed or in some cases sustained.

Considering the socio-economic situation and the paltry N30,000 national minimum wage, how do you think Nigerian workers and the masses can survive. Do you also subscribe to the call for another review of the minimum wage?

Going down memory lane when the minimum wage issue was being discussed with the Federal Government then, the exchange rate was N360 and fuel price was still N97. But now the dollar is going to N500. Also, fuel is now N165. This has called for concern for labour leaders for an urgent review of the minimum wage so that an average worker can have little to fend for themselves because N30,000 is nothing to write home about given the current trend. Also, apart from inflation and exchange rate, the high level of insecurity in the country has made it difficult for an average worker to get things with ease, which had made things go above the reach of the common man.

What is your take on the high level of insecurity in the country, and how has it impacted your sector and labour as a whole?

Insecurity in the country has been a very big challenge for labour. Apart from the COVID-19 pandemic, everyone is scared of travelling. Recently, we had an election up north and not everyone could go because we couldn’t afford to put the lives of our secretariat employees at risk, and so this is affecting in terms of connectivity, relationship and interaction. We can’t even still reach some of our members in some areas in the north if we want to organise meetings online due to poor network. We also have the issue with some companies struggling due to cases of kidnappings, which has made some of the companies organise their own security, which is not cost-effective, thereby impacting on their revenue.

In the end, it is the workers that bear the brunt as workers cannot ask for a salary increase or welfare package since it is obvious that the bulk of their revenue had been used to pay for security. On how government should approach the issues is that they should stop playing the ostrich in this matter.

They should admit that there is a problem because if they fail to do so, then we have not started. Security issues in Nigeria is now a misnormal in the sense that people no longer report incidences, they just take it that it has happened. It is only those that it has affected that come to make noise about it. Investors are shying away due to insecurity. This calls for attention and the Federal Government and President Muhammadu Buhari in particular need to address this matter. We must stop playing the ostrich in the case of insecurity in Nigeria if we must move forward.

Expatriates quota has been grossly abused in recent times; we have more foreigners in some organisations. What step is labour taking to address this?

This has been a source of concern for labour leaders and we are coming up with a position on this. We are planning to have a meeting with the Ministry of Interior and Labour on this matter.  There is a benchmark; it is one per cent to the indigenous workforce but what we have now is about three to five per cent, which is totally unacceptable. We know that Europe is saturated now and so most of these companies are pushing their workers because they cater for their own citizens so that they can still keep them in active employment and still get returns in terms of taxes to still keep their companies afloat. But in Nigeria, the government is not looking at this because the more we allow foreigners in, the more they are depleting our own workforce or industry. However, we are not averse to having expatriates working in our country but there is a process and standard. We should follow the rules so that all of us can work in accord. Most of them when they come in, the only way they can make way is to gradually phase out indigenous workers.

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