We’ll declare nationwide strike if El-Rufai sacks Kaduna workers — NLC

The Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) is set to declare an industrial action nationwide if the Kaduna State Government proceeds with plans to fire civil servants.

This was made known in their letter to President Muhammadu Buhari tagged “Call Governor El-Rufai to order”.

NLC President, Ayuba Wabba, made the disclosure to on Monday.

Governor Nasir El-Rufai recently announced the plan to disengage civil servants in the state, citing fiscal reasons and also to salvage the state’s finances as a significant amount of the statutory federal allocations to the state is being spent on the wages of public servants.

“Therefore, the state government has no choice but to shed some weight and reduce the size of the public service. It is a painful but necessary step to take, for the sake of the majority of the people of this state,” the governor was quoted in a statement.

“The public service of the state with less than 100,000 employees and their families cannot be consuming more than 90% of government resources, with little left to positively impact the lives of the more than 9 million that are not political appointees or civil servants.

“It is gross injustice for such a micro minority to consume the majority of the resources of the state.”

El-Rufai, however, promised to give “preferential treatment to those disengaged that are willing to take advantage of the state government’s various agricultural and entrepreneurship development schemes”.

Meanwhile, Wabba said the governor’s decision “falls short of the legal process of redundancy in the Labour Act”.

“He has violated the fundamental law that guides redundancy. Section 20 of the Labour Act. It provided three very important points that must be addressed before you declare redundancy. Item 1 says the employer shall inform the trade union, or workers’ representatives in this case, about the extent of anticipated redundancy. So, before you even anticipate, you must first inform the union which is the workers’ representatives,” he said.

He said El-Rufai “failed to consult with the trade union or negotiate the payments to the workers to be disengaged”.

The NLC President also disputed El-Rufai’s claims and figures on the amount expended on salaries of civil servants.

“What he (El-Rufai) quoted as what is being paid to workers as salary is not correct because we are aware that he included the salary of political office holders.

“90 per cent of over 20,000 teachers laid off by the El-Rufai-led administration in 2017 are yet to be paid their terminal benefits,” he said.

According to Wabba, the NLC at a meeting of its National Representatives Council decided that the workers in the state should down their tools, “after which a nationwide solidarity strike will follow if Mr El-Rufai insists on the planned retrenchment”.

“So as I speak to you, that decision has already been taken by the national representatives council. The national executive council of the Trade Union Congress and NLC will meet on Thursday to actually adopt that decision,” he said.