The Labour unions are agog, and a sort of vanity has enveloped them and their enabling lawyers. Agbero and co. are like the anarchist in the Russian novelist Ivan Turgenev’s fiction who wants to pull down the system. When asked what to put in its place, he answers, let it come down first. That is not the prudence of working. It is the logic of the Jacobin era.
They want the federal government to pay over N300k. If the money were available, it would be nice for all. But lack of a math sense is troubling Agbero and his TUC counterpart, Osifo. One, they think it is the federal government alone that would pay. Two, the governors have hollered that they can’t pay above N60K. Some are making noise about SUVs and Hajj money, and they should. I have not heard the Muslims complain, though they make the majority of the population. Again, Agbero and co should ask their lawmakers to return their SUVs and ask Pitobi to recant his assertion that they need the cars to work. Only then can Labour shed its hypocrisy on government spending. As Zebrudaya says, “what are good for the goose are good for the gizzard.”
But have they done the math of how much a month any salary increase will amount to compared with the money in the coffers? It is not even the amount that should bother us but whether we have the funds to pay given the state of the purse.
We need them to break down for us what it will cost. If we know that, we can now determine how much we have and can make.
Our Labour unions have turned into salary unions. That is not the substance and concept of unions. It is about working with employers to lift the people’s welfare. Labour is not an enemy camp. They cooperate to agree and even to disagree. That also involves propounding ideas. The NLC and TUC have no worthy idea other than shut down the grid, paralyse the banks, etc, In the last strike, it was an irony. The very poor for whom the strikes were for were not at home. They were in the markets selling wares, on the roadsides repairing tyres and in homes doing the plumbing.
Labour also forgets that most employers cannot afford N100k minimum wage. Would they embark on a strike against the moi moi seller for not paying his employee N100K, assuming we get that far or low? When all is done, I would want to know what the TUC and NLC are paying their security guards.
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