ASSBIFI Decries Workers’ Plight In Nigeria
As the Association of Senior Staff of Banks, Insurance and Financial Institutions (ASSBIFI) joined its counterparts across the world on Saturday to celebrate this year’s world day for decent work, it said that Nigerian workers are marginalised and fearful of an uninsured future.
Speaking at the ceremony organized by the union to mark the celebration in Lagos, tagged, ‘End Corporate Greed: The World Needs A Pay Rise’, ASSBIFI President, Comrade Oyinkan Olasanoye noted that despite the wealth created by global economy and technology in the working place, Nigerian workers are left behind.
According to her, with the global economic crisis hitting workers hard in the country, work can only be decent when it has fair income that enhances workers’ standard of living, with social protection for the family, without greed dictating the rule of the economy.
Her words, “the business environment has been described as challenging, unpredictable and unstable. However, executive compensation has grown to about 250 per cent faster than workers’ income, yet corporations blame high cost of doing business on workers”.
She called on government to use decent work as an action to bring about economic growth that put people first without struggling for living on minimum wage and pay rise for all workers.
The guest lecturer, Dr. Francis Anyim from the department of Industrial Relation and Personnel Management stressed that decent jobs are lost because of the change in the method of production which is capital intensive.
He lamented that employers refuse to pay the employees while government too refuses to be proactive in increasing minimum wage.
Anyim, in his lecture, noted that Nigeria should have been one of the countries paying higher minimum wage if not for greed, saying that the country is endowed with natural resources.
Anyim explained that the division among the labour unions has brought about the setback in resolving the issue of minimum wage.
“Lack of unity among the labour movement is causing problems for the Nigerian workers because the increment in minimum wage should have been resolved long ago; for government to include it in the 2018 budget”, he said.
