Labour

Protection of migrant workers’ rights: NLC acknowledges FAIRWAY support, tasks trade unions on more action

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2 years ago

Stories by Christian Appolos | Abuja

The Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) has charged its affiliate unions to adopt the responsibility of protecting migrant workers’ rights in Nigeria, in furtherance of the awareness campaigns and successes achieved through the support of the International Labour Organisation’s (ILO) FAIRWAY project.

NLC said it has achieved a lot in the efforts to attain a just, inclusive and conducive work space in Nigeria, where the human and labour rights of migrant workers are protected.

The congress noted that through the support of the FAIRWAY project, it has been able to improve awareness and sensitisation on the rights of migrant workers, improve knowledge on migration and labour migration at the national space, development of necessary tools in the form of information guide, lunch migration recruitment advisor, research on decent work challenges that are faced by migrant workers in Nigeria and carried out many activities that had repositioned the trade unions in the migration governance space.

NLC’s focal person on migration, Comrade James Eustace, said this when he spoke on the sidelines of a two-day programme for NLC affiliate focal persons and members of the National Trade Union Network on Migration on Decent Work and Fair Recruitment, held in Abuja.

“Migrant workers are among the most vulnerable workers that are exploited, especially those in irregular situation. The employers take advantage of their being in irregular situation to exploit them by offering jobs in hazardous situations with no commensurate pay, without necessary working conditions, rights and privileges that national workers enjoy. Because of that, we feel we must live up to our goal of protecting the rights of workers, including migrant workers,” Eustace noted.

On the two-day programme, Eustace said, “Trade unions are not just kicking off action because they have been very active and effective in the advocacy for the protection of human and labour rights of migrant workers.

“What this training aim at is to reactivate the national trade union migration network in Nigeria for the purpose of sustainability.”

He said the FAIRWAY project of the ILO has given effective support to the NLC and its affiliates and workers in Nigeria for them to be effective in the migration governance space.

“But we believe that we need mainstreaming these activities into our day-to-day trade union activities and we are doing that through national platform for focal persons on migration of the various affiliate unions of the NLC.

“These two days is to first enhance the capacity of members of the network and to sensitise them on the tools that the trade union has developed over time in promoting better migration governance in Nigeria.

“We are reconstituting the steering committee of the platform for sustainability to run activities on its own. What that means is that members of the affiliate unions who are in this steering committee are taking home the action plan to domestic it in their own union and run activities as it is being coordinated by the NLC at the national level.

“Members of our state council at zonal level in this steering committee who will be our apostles and champions at these various levels of the NLC in intensifying activities on labour migration,” Eustace added.

He also stressed the role of the media in achieving the goals of the steering committee.

“The media is part of the NLC family. We have an affiliate that organises the media in the NLC. Like we have said, nothing we can do is as important like collaborating with the media because the media is the mouthpiece of any organisation or institution. Whatever we do here can only be visible outside with the media collaboration. Therefore, as we are setting up this steering committee, we have media coordinators that will cut across all the other sectors that other members of the committee come from.”

Eustace added, “Giving the size of Nigeria and its complexity, FAIRWAY project, no matter how laudable it is, has not been able to active one third of what was envisaged. Nigeria is a country of over 200 million people but when you go into real statistics, I can tell you that about a thousand persons have not benefited from this training.

“Though we represent affiliate unions, we have more that need to know about the issues around migration governance. We need to take this to the grassroots and workplaces, especially the informal economy that are not unionised. At the end of the day, we need to ensure that migrant workers in Nigeria are organised into the trade unions and are covered by collective bargain agreements and other laws that protect the rights of workers.”

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