NLC tackles TUC for backing out of strike they didn’t call

The Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC, has said a trade union cannot pull out of an industrial action it did not initiate.

President of of the NLC, Joe Ajaero, who stated this in an interview on Channels Television’s programme, Politics Today,  on Monday night, spoke against the backdrop of the purported withdrawal from the two-day warning strike embarked upon by the NLC in protest against removal of fuel fuel subsidy by the federal government.

His position came barely hours after a meeting between the labour movement and the federal government over the same issue ended in deadlock.

Among its demands are to address the consequences of petrol price hikes, review the minimum wage, provide a workable roadmap to the CNG alternative, fix the country’s refineries, and pay lecturers’ salary arrears.

Asked if the NLC does not need the TUC, Ajaero stated:  “We can work independently, we can work jointly when we agree.

“But the NLC will not bother if we give a strike notice and then a union that didn’t give a strike notice says they are backing out of a strike that they didn’t call for.”

The NLC president, who contended that any union could give a strike notice, said further:  “TUC can give its strike notice and go ahead with the notice; NLC can give its strike notice and go ahead with the notice,” he said.

He, however, stated that if TUC gave  a strike notice, the NLC would not say it was not a part of it “because they didn’t even say they were part of it in the first instance.”

According to him, those are things being streamlined.

“I think that maybe the ministry is enjoying it,” Ajaero said.