A sombre Workers’ Day

Its history goes back to the nineteenth century.  What became known as May Day, or International Workers’ Day or Labour Day, had its beginnings in 1886 in what became known as the Haymarket Massacre in Chicago, United States, where police tried to disperse a large crowd of striking workers who were calling for a shorter […]

Its history goes back to the nineteenth century.  What became known as May Day, or International Workers’ Day or Labour Day, had its beginnings in 1886 in what became known as the Haymarket Massacre in Chicago, United States, where police tried to disperse a large crowd of striking workers who were calling for a shorter work day of eight hours. A bomb was thrown at the policemen by an unidentified assailant, and law officers then proceeded to fire live ammunition at a defenceless crowd of unarmed strikers, killing many in the process.
In Nigeria, Workers’ Day didn’t become a public holiday until it was officially declared so during the Second Republic.
If that Chicago scenario of nearly 140 years ago rings familiar today, it is because the adversarial interaction between the worker and his employer due chief to the growing gaps between the two still exists. But this is not always the case in all organisations with hierarchical employer-employee structured relationship.
Undeniably, the status of the worker in general global terms has improved tremendously over the years, although many would argue that vastly increased automation has meant the loss of jobs.
In Nigeria, what is known as organised labour primarily consists of the affiliate unions under the umbrella of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC).
The NLC has been in the forefront in the fight to protect workers’ rights and negotiate better welfare packages for them from reluctant emplyers.
Labour activism in the country was useful in the engagement with the government-the nation’s single biggest employers and greatest spender in budgetary terms-to produce National Minimum Wage legislation.  The application of that law has not been a universal success; some state governments pay the specified minimum, others pay their workers slightly higher, while many more pay less, arguing, with some merit, that because the federal government does not hire workers for states, it cannot determine compensation packages for their employees.
Labour activism has also caused severe upheavals, as when the NLC would ask all workers nationwide to walk off the job in order for the Congress to press certain demands.
A recent example was the January 2012 national shutdown that followed President Goodluck Jonathan’s announcement that the government had decided to remove subsidy on petrol effective immediately. The announcement caused outrage not just among bona fide payroll workers, but cross sections of the society, including student union and market women sororities, as well.
The last one year however has been one of relative calm on the labour front in the country, but this is not due to any absence of worker agitation.
The increasingly problematic security situation in the country has affected every aspect of national life; worker restiveness would only add to it and exacerbate the mood of apprehension among members of the public.
The picture is somewhat distorted when the conduct of individual unions and professional associations, like the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), whose long-running strike was mercifully brought to an end with the release of money  by the federal government to address most of the lecturers’ grievances, is considered.  
There is still the unresolved crisis in the country’s federal polytechnics and colleges of education.
The staff unions of both sections of the education sector have been strike over pay now for almost the entire academic calendar, with no immediate prospects that the anguish of their students and the pain that the parents must be feeling would end soon.
It is important therefore to reiterate, as Nigeria joins the rest of the world to mark International Workers’ Day, that the worker certainly deserves his wage, and that his rights must be protected.
The worker should also reflect on this May Day that with such workplace rights is attached his responsibility to play active part to enhance the orderly progress of the society he operates in.