CDWR Backs Ogun Workers’ Strike

CDWR calls on Gov. Dapo Abiodun to meet the demands of workers without further delay.

CDWR calls on TUC, NLC and civil society organizations to declare a 48-hour warning strike and mass protest nationwide in support of workers’ demands across the states and across sectors.

The Campaign for Democratic and Workers’ Rights (CDWR) Ogun state chapter backs the ongoing strike action embarked upon by the public sector workers and condemns in strong terms, the recalcitrant and insensitive response of the Dapo Abiodun-led APC government towards workers’ plights and demands. We, therefore, call on the government to immediately accede to workers’ demands without further delay.

The CDWR recalls that the state public sector workers issued a seven-day ultimatum on June 21, 2022, to the government, after several failed attempts by the negotiating teams led by the state leaderships of TUC and NLC to reach a satisfactory resolution with the government. This was after Dapo Abiodun government consistently refused to implement the MOU he voluntarily signed with the workers!

The demands of workers among others are remittance of 21 months of salary deductions; implementation of the Contributory Pension Scheme; payment of eight years of leave allowances; restoration of payment of gross salary and the implementation of Consequential Adjustment on Minimum Pension.

Rather than meet the workers’ demands expeditiously, the government has been displaying sheer arrogance and insensitivity, hence, workers have to embark on indefinite strike action at a workers’ congress held in Abeokuta on 27 June 2022.

This has again shown the disdain and anti-workers disposition of Dapo Abiodun government, despite its hypocrisy!

The Dapo Abiodun-led APC government has, since its inception, continued to unleash attacks on the poor working masses of Ogun state, implementing anti-poor, neo-liberal policies of privatization of public utilities, contract system, commercialization, Public-Private-Partnership (PPP) among others.

These anti-poor policies are responsible for the state of bad roads; the poor working masses burdened with all forms of levies and taxes, education is underfunded; quality and affordable public healthcare largely absent; affordable housing non-existent; denial of workers their benefits! All of these have worsened the living and working conditions of the masses.

The CDWR, therefore, urges the workers to maintain their steadfastness till their demands are met. And also to include in the demands, the need for the government to end privatization and other neo-liberal attacks on the working masses, including paying over 80 (eighty) months’ salary deductions of TASCE workers, and the immediate reinstatement of all unjustly sacked workers, and the discontinuation of all trumped-up charges on some workers in the institution currently being prosecuted at the law court by the state government.

CDWR calls on the TUC and NLC leadership, not to make the strike exclusively a sit-at-home. But rather, to organize public activities around it, like press conferences, symposia, rallies, protest marches, picketing, and leafleting, so as to gain mass support and sympathy for the workers’ demands, and prevent the government’s blackmail, harassment and distortion, which could discredit the workers and their demands. We also call on the national leadership of the TUC, NLC and the civil society organizations to declare and mobilize for a 48-hour warning strike and mass protest in support of Ogun workers’ demands; payment of the new national minimum wage owed workers by some states; ASUU’s demands, insecurity; high cost of living; rising inflation; fuel scarcity and high electricity tariff etc.

Above all, to begin to resolve these issues permanently, the CDWR calls on trade union leaders and civil society allies to commence the process of the formation of a genuine mass working peoples’ political party on socialist programmes of including nationalization of the commanding heights of the economy under the democratic management and control of working people.

SIGNED

Eko John Nicholas

Ogun State CDWR Coordinator

E-mail: [email protected]