The Trade Union Congress (TUC) has distanced itself from the strike call by the Nigerian Labour Congress, NLC.
The latter had announced a warning strike for Tuesday and Wednesday in protest of the untold hardship imposed on the masses on account of the oil subsidy removal.
The other reasons include, Federal Capital Territory Minister, Nyesom Wike’s threat to embark on building demolition and alleged police siege of the headquarters of National Union of Road Transport Workers.
TUC at its National Executive Committee, NEC’s meeting in Abuja on Saturday agreed to stay out of the NLC strike call citing several grounds.
A top person in the senior civil servants’ union told The Nation, “The TUC is not joining the NLC on that planned warning strike. The reason is because we are reaching out to the Federal Government. The government has already released palliatives to the states and we are also expecting the government to release the one for federal workers.
“When we met with the Senate, the statement by the NLC that they don’t have confidence in the Chief of Staff to the President-led committee led to the suspension of that committee because the man (Femi Gbajabiamila) felt if the NLC doesn’t have confidence in him why should he be leading the committee when the outcome will not be palatable? That stalled the work of the committee.
“Now, there is a Minister of Labour and Employment (Simon Lalong), who is supposed to be the leader of the government team. There is an ongoing effort to interact with us to get results.
“…Again, the issue of strike should not be one-sided. It should be a joint effort by the two labour centres to agree before issuing a strike notice. One centre cannot claim superiority over the other centre. It is not done anywhere.
“You cannot announce a strike and then decide to bring us in. It is supposed to be a decision taken by the two centres.
”The NLC is free to go on strike on its own. We are different unions.”
Similarly, NLC leadership in some states like Niger and Ogun have declared their non-participation in the proposed strike.
