Isaac G. Kuni.
TIME TO REBUILD THE LABOUR MOVEMENT ON WORKING CLASS GOALS & PRINCIPLES!
The Joint Action Front (JAF), a pro-labour civil society movement salutes the Nigerian workers organised under the umbrella of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) and Trade Union Congress (TUC) and all other organisations of the working people comprising the women, students, youth, artisans, traders, professionals, the unemployed, farmers, etc, on this May Day -1st of May, 2022 being the 136th Anniversary celebration of the International working class struggle.
As the Nigerian workers and the oppressed poor masses join their counterparts across the world to mark the May Day, otherwise known as ‘Workers Day’, JAF notes that the Nigerian workers and poor masses have been subjected to untold hardship created by the present failed capitalist socio-economic policies and the unjust corrupt system of exploitation and oppression! The hardships are daily manifesting in massive retrenchment, rise in unemployment, rising prices of goods and services which are unaffordable to majority of the poor masses, etc. Therefore, JAF urges the central organisations of the Nigerian workers – NLC and TUC – to provide leadership in the struggle for a system change, which has become inevitable in the light of the evidently monumental failure of not only the Buhari regime but of the entire capitalist ruling class of looters.
According to Dr. Oladipo Fashina, JAF Chairperson said, the view that workers can only benefit from the MAY DAY celebration, when they take opportunity of their collective gathering to resolve on organising to changing their conditions for better!
For JAF, the immediate tasks for the labour movement are:
To mobilise for mass struggle against the excruciatingly high cost of living;
Reversal of the neoliberal policies of Privatisation, Deregulation, Commercialisation, Concessioning, subsidies withdrawal, devaluation of the Naira, sales of public assets, etc;
A struggle to compel the anti-people Buhari regime to aceed to the demands of ASUU, NASU, SSANU, NAAT and other unions in the education sector. Adequate funding of public education at all levels should never be negotiable, in a country with a minimum wage of a meagre N30,000 paid to the poor workers and where politicians of the ruling APC Government and its Ministers obtain a party nomination form at N100-million;
Fight for decent work and living wage (End casualisation and other anti-labour practices in workplaces);
The challenge of bringing together workers in formal and informal sectors in the economy, artisans, academics, youth and students, women, professionals, etc to form themselves into a political party of the working class in principles, values, character and practice.
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