As a unionist myself, it’s painful that union leaders often fail to see the banana peels right before them until they fall.
Now that the Federal Government has ordered all Vice Chancellors to reopen all universities with immediate effect and proscription looms on the Academic Union of University Staff (ASUU), who wins?
Even if the union is not proscribed, for how long can it hold on? Though ASUU is yet to issue any statement, it is doubtful whether it still can mop up anything at this point. The union simply lost the initiative and lost the steam of the critical mass of public opinion in its unnecessary grandstanding.
At all times in ‘wars’ between labour and its employer, the former loses and it’s painful. Usually, sadly, it is often because labour assumes its rights are elastic.
The Yoruba captured the dilemma of labour this way: Bi irunmu alagbaro ba gun gbonran, eni to gbe ise fun loga e. Simply translated as: No matter how old you may be, the one that employs you is older. In the matter of labour, they still say, Olowo o le je orogan, ki iwofa je agun mate. The slave master cannot abhor bending down, and his tall slave insists his height makes bending difficult. Once his master needs to pick something from the floor, he must go down low, or else, he would be told his life history.
It’s sad that ASUU lost the opportunity for landing the ongoing strike provided by the order of the National Industrial Court of Nigeria. It is doubtful whether the window for continued negotiation provided by the judgment would still be available in the circumstances.
With the door to collective bargaining shut, I believe ASUU members would be guided to realise that the union can no longer be held liable to whatever happens to it members’ employment from the moment their respective Vice Chancellors decided to open the schools, which must be immediate in line with the directive.
They were employed at various times by the school’s management and not ASUU. It is sad that another glorious opportunity had been wasted, but ASUU ought to know better. As beautiful as the #EndSARS protest was in demanding an end to continued torture and high handedness of the Police, Nigerians are witnesses to the inglorious way it was snuffed out and the revisionism thereafter.
However, in the spirit of the electoral cycle season, I would urge the Federal Government to go ahead and pay the earned allowances and the contentious seven months owed this year, though lecturers only worked for 44 days in 2022.
I believe ASUU would take this in its stride, as another learning curve in handling labour relations and the whole concept of unionism. The onus on union leaders is to know when to stop pressing when the boil gets ripened to the point of busting.
The principle of collective bargaining gives no man the right to pull down the whole roof and assume it is within his fundamental rights. The principle of law is forever this: where your own fundamental rights stop is where another man’s rights begins. It is trite and beggars no contention.
The struggle, for labour, forever continues. Aluta continua…Victoria Acerta.
