Tools and skills for trade unions’ engagement with the state’s policy cycle process
1.0 Introduction
It gives me great pleasure to present this paper for several reasons. NUPENG is definitely one of the most important unions in the country today, due to the strategic place of oil in the economy, nationally and globally. It has also, along with its PENGASSAN sister union which I have had much closer training relations with , played very progressive roles in the trade union movement, and national polity, over the last three decades, in different ways. This is the more reason why the theme of this workshop and the topic I am to speak on is very germane, for which I commend the leadership, and education department of NUPENG.
I have taken the liberty of re-phrasing the topic somewhat in two different ways, which have key significance for our discussion.
First, I have replaced “government” with “state”. The former is more temporal, as we can talk of the governments of Babangida, Obasanjo, Yar’Adua and Jonathan for example, while the latter is the structure that governments inherit and equally relinquish. Thus, the (post-colonial) Nigerian state remains the same despite the transitions of governments. While some policies pass away with the specific governments that enact them, many get institutionalised by the state, with consequences well beyond the tenure of specific governments. A few examples of such are: the re-organisation of the trade unions on the basis of the “new labour policy” of December 4, 1975; the Land Use Act of 1979; privatization, which commenced with the IBB years of SAP; public sector reforms & monetization, which are more recent but have been carried on by three governments now.
Second, I have replaced “policy formulation and implementation” with “policy cycle process”. This is quite important for two intertwined reasons that influence the perspective with which we engage with policy. The first is for us to aptly grasp “policy formulation and implementation” with a cyclical process perspective. The second is to bring attention to the fact that the “process cycle” is broader than those two key components (i.e. “formulation” & “implementation”) and the other components are equally vital terrains for broader civil society (and particularly in our case; trade unions’) engagement with the state.
The paper is thus organised into three broad sections. In the section immediately below, we summarily put in perspective: the policy process; why trade unions need to engage &; how trade unions engagement with the state’s policy process could simultaneously enrich social reformation for working people & build workers’ power for such contestations as would be necessary, for far more qualitative social transformations. The second section looks at the internal and external challenges and limitations workers and trade unions confront in rising up to the tasks involved in policy engagement, noting the roots of these. In the third section, we address the tools and skills unions would require for achieving significant policy influence, on the basis of building workers’ power.
2.0 The state, trade unions and the policy process
2.1Policy, the state and the working class
Policy is a term used to describe a framework or guidelines for reaching decisions and steering the course of actions of a specific social actor or set of actors. It could be considered as a documented or implied “statement of intent” or “commitment”, based on some principle(s), which guides actions and dispositions. Policy is thus in general inherent in the rational activities of persons , groups & states. It is sometimes implicit, particularly for persons or informal groups. Formal organisations however tend to have explicit policies in some form or the other.
State policy is very fundamental and different from organisational policies, because they could and do impact on persons, groups and organisations within the territory of the concerned state. It is important to understand what the state is, in general and particularly in modern society, to better grasp why state policy is so important and the possibilities and limitations of engagement with it.
The presence and character of a state in society reflects the reality of classes and class struggle. There were no states in the earliest human societies which were communalist social formations, based on a primitive mode of production. What was produced at this period was barely enough for everybody to feed and cloth. To produce the food for society through hunting and fruits gathering, also required a communal form of existence and a primitive form of egalitarianism. As humankind improved on the means with which it produced means of livelihood , men and women could produce surpluses of basic necessities and as well luxurious items.
A few people got to corner these surpluses for themselves, taking these through their greater strength, wisdom, or claims to being part of the families that first founded the settlement of different communities. Of course it was obvious to them that there was the need to institutionalise their power to exploit the immense majority by grabbing the social surplus or they would be challenged and indeed stopped in their tracks. They established states, to safeguard their interests, making themselves kings, lords and such like. Every ruling class has thus had to construct states in defence, primarily, of their interests, but presented as a body, over and above society in the interest of all members and groups in society.
States have been described as being no more than the executive committee of every social formation’s ruling class. This position is not an incorrect one. The state has also been described as a kind of “opposite” to civil society. This is to say that civil society comprises the entirety of relations and organisations between the nuclear unit of family and the state, which of course includes trade unions. This is also an enlightening perspective. There are however overlapping areas of relations between the state and civil society, particularly in modern societies. Unlike earlier states such as those where the word of the king was law, capitalist society, in general, cannot but guarantee some freedoms and liberties which collectively are best expressed as liberal democracy.
This is for several reasons. First, there is the need for workers to be free to sell their labour power to the employers and for the employer as investor to be free to move his or her capital to where profit is best maximized, irrespective of the social cost . Second, modern industrial society with its characteristic mass production and consumption (indeed more of “consumerism”) creates mass publics. The mass media also further binds these, although not as neutrally, or objectively as we are often made to believe. Third, the possible antagonism of the mass of working people could burst out in flames of rage if authoritarianism is overtly made the dominant form of state rule in all the forms of capitalist states.
We thus have the core of the state i.e. the assemblage of coercive and ideological apparatus for maintaining the domination necessary for capitalist accumulation to continue, absorbing elements of civil society and thus establishing what the Italian Marxist, Antonio Gramsci described as “the integral state”. It is in the context of this that the possibility of “non-state actors”, such as trade unions having policy influence, emerges.
This possibility makes it possible for us by engaging state policy to be able to win some reforms. Reforms in themselves are not necessarily bad things. They are actually necessary to further the amelioration of the working conditions of workers, and to ensure improvements in our living standards. In winning reforms through policy engagement and struggle from below in general, the confidence of the working class is equally bolstered that it can win fundamental concessions.
It is from this point of departure that as a trade unionist, I perceive the challenges of policy engagement. It is also from this perspective that it is necessary to note the dangers of perceiving the tokenism of reforms as being adequate for the emancipation of the working class and the fundamental transformation of human society.
2.2 Trade unions and policy influence
Trade unions are the primary and most representative organisations of the working class. This legitimacy was won through struggle and particularly by organising. It is also through organising i.e. building workers’ power that such legitimacy as the primary voice and structure of the working class is and can be maintained.
Trade unions were at some point in time or the other in most countries, illegal combinations. In Nigeria for example, while there had been manifestations of trade unionism from the nineteenth century and a trade union organisation since 1912, it was not until April 1, 1939 that trade unions became legal entities. The Colonial Secretary at the time, Lord Passfield, who originally was a reformist socialist known as Sydney Webb, had pointed out that if trade unions were not allowed to be legal, they would easily become allies to the radical nationalist movement then demanding “self government now”, for Nigerians in Nigeria. Thus legalization of trade unions was itself a policy aimed at incorporating them into the colonial scheme of things. Similarly the policy of “guided democracy and limited intervention” of the military in 1975, which led to the establishment of the current NLC on February 28, 1978, was with the same intent.
Of concern for us here though is how trade unions can and do influence policies and the policy processes as a whole. Why do trade unions have to wield policy influence? State policies affect both trade unions’ members and trade unions as collective organisations. Thus, unions have to be interested in influencing the contents and forms of policies, in defence of rights already won, and to further their interests on matters that affect workers as citizens and as workers as well as those affecting unions as corporate entities.
2.3. The Policy Cycle and Processes
Policies have life in that they are born and die to be replaced by similar or quite different policies. This “life” of a policy could be considered as the Policy Cycle, with different interlocking stages which have different processes. Each stage, or component of the Policy Cycle involves different actors , these could of course include trade unions, especially where and when they realise the crucial need for policy engagement. The processes at each stage equally require different, albeit interlocking tools and skills, to be able to adequately engage and influence state policy.
The stages of the Policy Cycle are thus:
• Agenda Setting
• Formulation
• Adoption
• Implementation
• Evaluation
Agenda setting: this is the point of problem identification. It involves awareness raising and contestation over priority This stage could be initiated by the government, as is the case with many executive bills and administrative policies. They could as well be initiated by civil society, such as the Media Rights Agenda/Freedom of Information Coalition’s work on the FOI Bill which is today, after about a dozen years, the Freedom of Information Act, 2011. Trade unions also initiate this, particularly on wage-issues. While this is legitimate, not only do non-wage issues directly affect union members, but so many other economic policies, which we could be more proactive in engaging equally affect the real wages of workers;
Policy formulation: this is the stage at which policy starts moving from a diffuse sense of defining what the problem is, to trying to construct the solution that the policy is supposed to bear. It involves: interpretation or, framing of the identified problem; setting of the policy objectives and; towards meeting those set objectives, fashioning out propositions as options on strategies that would inhere in the policy;
Adoption: this is the stage of decision-making, subsequent to the policy formulation stage. It often is by the legislative or executive arm of government at different levels, but could be bi-partite or tri-partite and thus involving organised labour, as well;
Policy implementation: the major representative actor for government at this stage is the bureaucracy. It tries to ossify policy as given presenting it as; thus not possible to be influenced. But this is not necessarily so, particularly where and when trade unions have been very active in bringing their influence to bear at earlier stages in the cycle;
Policy evaluation: it is critical to determine the extent to which policies meet set policy objectives. This is both for the purpose of learning from the successes or failure of particular policies as well as for drawing public attention to the grave limitations of policies that trade unions have pointed out from the onset would be nothing but disastrous, such as the SAP and other neoliberal policies of government. Policy evaluation need not be only after implementation, i.e. summative. It should as well be formative, i.e. a form of monitoring while policy implementation is ongoing.
2.4. Policy influence and social reformation
I have pointed out earlier that policies of reforms have severe limitations when they are not tied to more thorough-going social transformation. It is however very difficult, if not impossible for the ruling elites in economically backward countries such as Nigeria to make that needed linkage of reformation-to-transformation. Indeed our history is replete with several declarations of such intent but which the reality of praxis have shown the other direction towards stagnation. Be that as it may, how trade unions engagement with the policy processes and thus securing of policy influence leads to some level of amelioration of the lives of working people and the strengthening of the working class could be gleaned from the different types of policies and how we have won some concessions from challenging them in recent times.
Trade unions have engaged with the following types of policies over the years:
Distributive policies: the struggle for re-distribution is ever constant in capitalist societies. Policies have been used as tools for effecting or blocking this. Trade unions have engaged with this directly by struggling for new minimum wages and combating wage freeze policies. They have indirectly battled this through protestations against the huge allowances of legislatives and demanding increased funding for public education;
Social policy: which is a distinctive form of distributive policies dwells on state policies that affect the welfare of citizens. Of particular importance are; healthcare, education, social security, & pensions. Organised labour has engaged with these through involvement in structures, mechanisms and processes; that led to establishing the National Health Insurance Scheme in 2005, of the social insurance trust fund, related to the Pensions Reform Act, and (particularly with regards to unions in the education sector) some minimal increases in government spending on education;
Regulatory policies: the most visible one which labour has consistently challenged is that of the deregulation of the downstream sector of the petroleum industry. The public sector reforms and privatization in general are also some of the regulatory policies that organised labour has attempted to influence.
It is noteworthy to stress here that while the foregoing show that we are not starting from zero, the limited extent of these engagements’ successes, as we all know, serve as a pointer to two things, which are not mutually exclusive. One is the abridged nature of the commitment of the country’s rulers to the citizenry. The other is that organised labour could probably have won more concessions if it were better equipped.
3.0. Prospects and challenges for unions’ engagement with state policy
It is necessary to understand the major challenges trade unions face that limit their ability to adequately influence policies in the interest of their members and the working class in general, for us to make propositions on the tools and skills needed to overcome these. It is however apt to point out that there are also prospects or opportunities for deepening policy influence.
3.1. Prospects for trades unions’ policy influence
Probably the most important of the contextual prospects for unions’ engagement with state policy in Nigeria today is the democratisation of the national polity. While there was room for engagement with state policy even during the military rule, this was decidedly constrained. The institutionalisation of the legislative arm of government as well as the expansion of room for engaging with the executives at different levels as well as the bureaucracy are elements of the context for policy engagement which organised labour has exploited, but only to an arguably minimal extent.
Related to the spate of democratisation are some of the reforms that have already been won, such as the Freedom of Information Act which, at least formally, broadens access to official information. Trade unions and other civil society organisations would need to concretely test the actuality of this freedom of information.
Along with democratisation, the national polity has witnessed decentralisation. Despite the shortcomings of Nigerian federalism, it is possible to engage with states’ governments and (even though on a more constrained plane) with LGAs in the federation. Indeed in some instances, partisan contestation between the federal and some states’ governments could be exploited by trades unions in the process of policy engagement.
The new information and communication technologies provide a highway of opportunities for influencing policy in two ways. On one hand the open a vast expanse of information which unions could need to further their positions in the setting of agenda or formulation of state policy. On the other hand, it provides trade unions with a platform for reaching an ever expanding audience of publics towards winning broad social appeal and support for their stands on policies. These include the possible use of bulk sms, facebook groups and pages, telephone calls, blackberry broadcasts and emails. Related to this is the expansion of spaces of globalisation from below, expressed through international structures and mechanisms for generating solidarity between workers and trade unions across the world.
3.2. Key problems affecting trades unions’ engagement with state policy
Trade unions face a wide range of challenges in engaging state policy. Some of these problems are external to the unions. A large number of these are internal.
3.2.1. External challenges
The major external challenges that unions could face include the following:
Political context: the context of the policy processes is of great import for any actor, particularly non-state actors that want to influence policy. Corruption is a major drawback to non-state actors’ policy influence. It is not however apt to consider countries like Nigeria as being so corrupt while there is no corruption in advanced capitalist countries for example. This is utterly false, as several news scoops have revealed in the UK, the US and several other Western countries. A major difference though is the mitigating role of institutionalising processes and mechanisms that make policy engagement more impersonal;
Extent of openness of the policy processes: this is related to the extent of institutionalization of the policy processes. It needs to be stressed that this extent is not divine but partly circumscribed or expanded through policy influence itself. The extent of institutionalised consultations and even participatory democracy, such as in budgeting in Porto Allegre, Brasil or Kerala, in India were won through policy engagement which was linked with overt political engagement. Policy is decidedly political and the policy processes are political processes, involving vested class (and non-class) interests, contending actors and institutional pressures. But they could be engaged in a strictly “technicalist” manner or from an organising approach. The later approach helps over time to expand the extent of the policy processes, while the former could keep trade unions on the fringes of the policy processes glass ceiling;
Limited (technical) legitimacy: legitimacy of (non-state) actors in the policy processes is crucial for their winning policy influence. There are basically four sources of policy influence legitimacy. These are; political, moral, legal and technical. Trade unions tend to be rather weak in their repertoire of the technical source. While the membership base of organised labour gives political legitimacy, its role as champion of the causes of the downtrodden provides moral authority and registration of trades unions as corporate bodies that could restrain trade in a sense ensures legal legitimacy, the weaknesses of unions’ propositions in terms of depth and expertise, aligned with the prejudice of trade unionists as “table bangers” could be said to rob them of much needed technical basis of legitimacy, particularly in Nigeria.
3.2.2 Internal challenges
There are close correlations between the external challenges and the internal challenges. The major internal challenges are:
Lack of (technical) capacity: trade unions generally have inadequate capacity for processing, analysing and generating the necessary kind of information for critical engagement with policymakers and other actors in the policy processes. This has a lot to do with the absence of functional research departments or units within the unions both singly and collectively;
Poor knowledge and inadequate concern with policy processes: few unions have requisite knowledge about the policy processes and many more even lack much concern about these. This situation is closely related to the lack of capacity but distinct from it. The two challenges however reinforce a vicious cycle of self-marginalisation;
The funding problem: critical engagement with policy requires funding. A number of unions hardly have enough funds for what are considered the more “line functions” of administration and organising. It could be argued though that for quite a number of unions, it is not so much a case of lack of funds as one of priority. It is not impossible particularly if unions in the same sector pull resources together to fund the needed research work and campaigns for aptly engaging with state policy;
The human resource problem: where unions have (functional?) research units/departments, these are grossly understaffed and the few staffers rather under-trained. This results in both quantitative and qualitative human resource deficits for policy engagement by the trade unions;
The problem of communication: communication is of the essence for policy engagement. Interventions of trades unions in the policy process need to take note of the different audiences and how to aptly pass across their message in language that elicit further dialogue, as much as possible, even when they are in disagreement with the state. Thus, such interventions should have the apt balance of technical jargons where necessary and simplicity without being simplistic. Interventions also need to be timely at each stage of the policy processes;
Poor traditions of alliance/coalition-building: there are ever-expanding spectra of non-state actors involved in different ways at different stages of the policy cycle with the increase in NGOs and the spread of “NGOism”. Trade unions have not learnt how to use alliances and possibly coalitions with these, effectively for broadening policy influence;
Episodic (non-strategic) approach to engagement: trade unions engagement with the policy processes is hardly ever strategic. Different stages are engaged, where and when they are at all, in spasmodic, episodic manners.
These challenges are quite daunting, but not insurmountable. Indeed a critical necessity for unions that intend to utilise the democratic space and expand this for their memberships and the working class as a whole is to be able to rise above these challenges.
Possible tools and skills for achieving this comprise the last section of the main body of this essay.
4.0 Engaging with state policy; tools and skills for trade unions
There are no magical portions for curing the “ills” or if you will, overcoming the obstacles that presently confront trades unions in engaging with state policy. The tools, skills and strategies that unions have to bring to bear require doing some things we already do, better. They also require that we introduce some practices that we have not hitherto considered as necessary.
There are elements of the challenges before us that we cannot wholly resolve, such as the external challenges. But we can significantly influence the re-constitution of their dynamics. There are others, bearing on internal inadequacies which we can more decisively confront. But even these would not be automatically resolved. Habits take time to change and entrenching new ways of work, which in a way is what policy engagement as an approach to our work would entail, would be faced by some extent of internal resistance to change. It is in this light that I would say the first thing needed most is political will to walk the talk of this workshop. Such political will requires leadership, but to be thorough-going and successful must come from bottom up, with the structures of the union, from the base to the apex, buying into the “project”. This for me is a major reason for commending NUPENG in bringing its branch level officers together for this workshop.
We now look at some key tools and skills, in the light of the foregoing:
4.1. Context assessment
The external situation that trades unions operate in to win policy influence need to be aptly understood. The external situation is both general and specific. That is to say that there are some contextual issues that could generally apply to state policies, such as the: macro-economic context; politico-legal realities; other non-state actors that could have some form of allied or antagonistic interests to that of the union’s quest of policy influence; formal and informal networks that bind several actors within and outside the implementing bureaucracy and; the way policy formulators and implementers think and their proclivities.
This is the broadest sense of context assessment. Where a trade union has its contextual assessments regularly updated, it serves as a very useful point of departure for engaging with different specific policies’ processes.
4.2. Policy processes mapping
Policy processes mapping is a form of specific context mapping. It however also goes beyond this as it addresses both the context and possible contents of the policy processes at each stage of the policy cycle, right from the onset.
It draws on the broader consummated context assessments to distil out specific context assessments, it then goes further. It is about strategic planning. The union should try identify what the issues at each of the five key stages of the policy cycle are and: how these could resonate with general public sentiments in relation to the union’s interest; the different actors at each stage and what there interests could be; possible actions they could take, possible allies and possible opponents; how the message of the union’s interest could be framed; possible scenarios of the resultant endpoint; possible decisive moments and how it could handle these; resources (financial, technical, human & political) that the union would require for its policy pursuit.
4.3. Research and evidence
Trade unions seriously need to build on their capacity and/or access to qualitative research. Research is crucial for providing evidence at different stages of the policy process to influence the options taken as being in line with union positions or for placing before the policymakers and the public the fact that those choices taken in contradiction to the union’s well thought out propositions have failed or are failing. Qualitative research is also key for the apt interpretation of evidence generated by different actors in the policy processes.
Thus, the need for functional research units/departments cannot be overemphasized. This can however, not be built over night and unions are not to fold their hands while building such, on the contrary, building such has to be part of a broader research strategy.
The use of existing research institutions and mechanisms is of great importance. Research reports from a number of institutes and institutions could provide excellent materials for context assessment as well as for elements of policy processes mapping. It is also necessary for trades unions to re-address the challenge of building the hitherto proposed NLC Labour Centre for Social and Economic Research (LACSER). Meanwhile, trades unions in the same or similar sectors could pull resources together for sector-specific research work that could be commissioned or conducted using active research methods.
4,4 Interventionist communication
In engaging policy, communication is meant to serve intervention that will broaden policy influence. Trade unions have to be very strategic in communication. The first place to start would be an evaluation of the extent of success or failure of earlier policy engagement-oriented communication. The main questions to address would be; how adequately were the union’s positions addressed to policymakers, allies, opponents and the general public at the different stages of the cycle?
Communication for policy influence would have to be: planned, based on the context assessment and policy processes mapping; packaged, in terms of envisioning & framing to inspire buy-ins by several other actors in the policy processes field; targeted, using several media including the press, the internet and advocacy visits; monitored entailing on-going evaluation of its effects in the course of the policy cycle &; evaluated, at the end of the policy cycle to properly assess its extent of effectiveness and for lessons drawn from this to be brought to bear in subsequent policy engagement efforts.
Thus, trade unions must have policy engagement communication strategies, which will entail such general elements as stated above and particular dimensions based on the specific policy’s characteristics, distilled from the policy processes mapping.
4.5. Networking as a fortress for policy engagement
The pivotal role of networks for building policy influence is indeed near unquantifiable. A trade union that horns its networking skills is very likely to be much more successful in engaging state policy than one which does not. Networks help to coalesce the strengths of different collectives (and individuals) while attenuating their different weaknesses.
Forging alliances (which could be bilateral with another organisation) or building coalitions (these are more multilateral by implication) are just two forms of networking. Trade unions could network with a broad array of actors for different purposes within the overall goal of specific or general policy influence-building. Examples of these include networks with: researchers or research institutions for evidence-building and interpretation; training institutes or CSOs for capacity building; solidarity support organisations (“donors”) for financial, material or technical assistance; specific policymakers that an history of relationships had been established with as means of working behind “enemy lines” &; journalists both for prompt dissemination of information and for having quick access informally, to information relevant for policy engagement.
4.6 Globalisation from below and the boomerang tactic
International working class solidarity and networking with pro-labour or international organisations (as well as some that might not necessarily be always pro-labour but might have a coincidence of interest with the union on a particular policy issue), is proving to be a veritable tool for building national policy influence. One of the general tactics used with this tool is called the “boomerang”. Another tactic which is specific to unions is that of Global Framework Agreements with a corresponding spread of Global Memorandums of Agreement.
The boomerang is when a trade union or any other civil society organisation in lets say country “A”, appeals to another organisation(s) in country “B” to put pressure on the government in country “A”, by mobilizing public opinion and lobbying the government in country “B”.
The Global (also called “International”) Framework Agreements are reached by Global Union Federations with multinational enterprises and could be invoked in affecting national state policy, within some context. Global Memorandums of Agreement are signed between multinational corporations and communities, albeit often with the intent of dousing radical engagements by these communities, as we have seen with Chevron & Shell in relation to communities in the Niger delta, since 2006. They however do provide some contextual framework that in some circumstances could be invoked in engaging policy.
The international networking of globalisation from below also helps provide unions with information on best practices in other lands that could be useful in engaging with national state policies.
4.7 The centrality of campaigns
A campaign is basically a project for making an issue the issue. To influence policy, it is thus necessary to integrate the different strands noted above i.e. approaching policy influence as policy engagement campaigns.
This would entail: defining the policy interest of the union as a campaign message; defining the targets and other possible beneficiaries (as well as possible losers) from the formulation and implementation of the policy objectives in line with the union’s aims; formulation of a campaign communication strategy; fashioning out a campaign “dramaturgy”; committing specific resources to the policy engagement campaign and; carrying along membership in pursuit of policy influence.
5.0 In lieu of a conclusion
This paper has put in perspective the relationships between the state, the working class, state policies, policy influence and reforms. It identified the evolution of states as being characteristic of class antagonism and thus points at possible limits to influencing state policy in the interest of working people. This it did to avoid sowing seeds of illusions while also placing the ultimate goal of the working class self-emancipation in view, even as we tackle the much necessary struggle for reforms.
The paper further showed that despite these limitations, a lot could be done in terms of winning concessions for union members and the working class as a whole, here and now and that the spaces for this must not be handled with disdain. It stressed the fact that challenges that pose as obstacles to engaging state policy are numerous being both external and internal, but are not insurmountable. It posited key tools and skills required for overcoming these obstacles.
It is hoped that with the earlier group activity which accompanied the paper, you would be able to better situate the general views of this paper to the specific needs of your great union in its quest for broadened policy influence in Nigeria.
Thank you so much for listening.
16th August, 2011
Enugu
*being a paper presented at the NUPENG/FES 2-day workshop on state policy engagement for trade unionists, held on August 16-17, 2011 @ The Maybach Hotel & Resort, Enugu
It gives me great pleasure to present this paper for several reasons. NUPENG is definitely one of the most important unions in the country today, due to the strategic place of oil in the economy, nationally and globally. It has also, along with its PENGASSAN sister union which I have had much closer training relations with , played very progressive roles in the trade union movement, and national polity, over the last three decades, in different ways. This is the more reason why the theme of this workshop and the topic I am to speak on is very germane, for which I commend the leadership, and education department of NUPENG.
I have taken the liberty of re-phrasing the topic somewhat in two different ways, which have key significance for our discussion.
First, I have replaced “government” with “state”. The former is more temporal, as we can talk of the governments of Babangida, Obasanjo, Yar’Adua and Jonathan for example, while the latter is the structure that governments inherit and equally relinquish. Thus, the (post-colonial) Nigerian state remains the same despite the transitions of governments. While some policies pass away with the specific governments that enact them, many get institutionalised by the state, with consequences well beyond the tenure of specific governments. A few examples of such are: the re-organisation of the trade unions on the basis of the “new labour policy” of December 4, 1975; the Land Use Act of 1979; privatization, which commenced with the IBB years of SAP; public sector reforms & monetization, which are more recent but have been carried on by three governments now.
Second, I have replaced “policy formulation and implementation” with “policy cycle process”. This is quite important for two intertwined reasons that influence the perspective with which we engage with policy. The first is for us to aptly grasp “policy formulation and implementation” with a cyclical process perspective. The second is to bring attention to the fact that the “process cycle” is broader than those two key components (i.e. “formulation” & “implementation”) and the other components are equally vital terrains for broader civil society (and particularly in our case; trade unions’) engagement with the state.
The paper is thus organised into three broad sections. In the section immediately below, we summarily put in perspective: the policy process; why trade unions need to engage &; how trade unions engagement with the state’s policy process could simultaneously enrich social reformation for working people & build workers’ power for such contestations as would be necessary, for far more qualitative social transformations. The second section looks at the internal and external challenges and limitations workers and trade unions confront in rising up to the tasks involved in policy engagement, noting the roots of these. In the third section, we address the tools and skills unions would require for achieving significant policy influence, on the basis of building workers’ power.
2.0 The state, trade unions and the policy process
2.1Policy, the state and the working class
Policy is a term used to describe a framework or guidelines for reaching decisions and steering the course of actions of a specific social actor or set of actors. It could be considered as a documented or implied “statement of intent” or “commitment”, based on some principle(s), which guides actions and dispositions. Policy is thus in general inherent in the rational activities of persons , groups & states. It is sometimes implicit, particularly for persons or informal groups. Formal organisations however tend to have explicit policies in some form or the other.
State policy is very fundamental and different from organisational policies, because they could and do impact on persons, groups and organisations within the territory of the concerned state. It is important to understand what the state is, in general and particularly in modern society, to better grasp why state policy is so important and the possibilities and limitations of engagement with it.
The presence and character of a state in society reflects the reality of classes and class struggle. There were no states in the earliest human societies which were communalist social formations, based on a primitive mode of production. What was produced at this period was barely enough for everybody to feed and cloth. To produce the food for society through hunting and fruits gathering, also required a communal form of existence and a primitive form of egalitarianism. As humankind improved on the means with which it produced means of livelihood , men and women could produce surpluses of basic necessities and as well luxurious items.
A few people got to corner these surpluses for themselves, taking these through their greater strength, wisdom, or claims to being part of the families that first founded the settlement of different communities. Of course it was obvious to them that there was the need to institutionalise their power to exploit the immense majority by grabbing the social surplus or they would be challenged and indeed stopped in their tracks. They established states, to safeguard their interests, making themselves kings, lords and such like. Every ruling class has thus had to construct states in defence, primarily, of their interests, but presented as a body, over and above society in the interest of all members and groups in society.
States have been described as being no more than the executive committee of every social formation’s ruling class. This position is not an incorrect one. The state has also been described as a kind of “opposite” to civil society. This is to say that civil society comprises the entirety of relations and organisations between the nuclear unit of family and the state, which of course includes trade unions. This is also an enlightening perspective. There are however overlapping areas of relations between the state and civil society, particularly in modern societies. Unlike earlier states such as those where the word of the king was law, capitalist society, in general, cannot but guarantee some freedoms and liberties which collectively are best expressed as liberal democracy.
This is for several reasons. First, there is the need for workers to be free to sell their labour power to the employers and for the employer as investor to be free to move his or her capital to where profit is best maximized, irrespective of the social cost . Second, modern industrial society with its characteristic mass production and consumption (indeed more of “consumerism”) creates mass publics. The mass media also further binds these, although not as neutrally, or objectively as we are often made to believe. Third, the possible antagonism of the mass of working people could burst out in flames of rage if authoritarianism is overtly made the dominant form of state rule in all the forms of capitalist states.
We thus have the core of the state i.e. the assemblage of coercive and ideological apparatus for maintaining the domination necessary for capitalist accumulation to continue, absorbing elements of civil society and thus establishing what the Italian Marxist, Antonio Gramsci described as “the integral state”. It is in the context of this that the possibility of “non-state actors”, such as trade unions having policy influence, emerges.
This possibility makes it possible for us by engaging state policy to be able to win some reforms. Reforms in themselves are not necessarily bad things. They are actually necessary to further the amelioration of the working conditions of workers, and to ensure improvements in our living standards. In winning reforms through policy engagement and struggle from below in general, the confidence of the working class is equally bolstered that it can win fundamental concessions.
It is from this point of departure that as a trade unionist, I perceive the challenges of policy engagement. It is also from this perspective that it is necessary to note the dangers of perceiving the tokenism of reforms as being adequate for the emancipation of the working class and the fundamental transformation of human society.
2.2 Trade unions and policy influence
Trade unions are the primary and most representative organisations of the working class. This legitimacy was won through struggle and particularly by organising. It is also through organising i.e. building workers’ power that such legitimacy as the primary voice and structure of the working class is and can be maintained.
Trade unions were at some point in time or the other in most countries, illegal combinations. In Nigeria for example, while there had been manifestations of trade unionism from the nineteenth century and a trade union organisation since 1912, it was not until April 1, 1939 that trade unions became legal entities. The Colonial Secretary at the time, Lord Passfield, who originally was a reformist socialist known as Sydney Webb, had pointed out that if trade unions were not allowed to be legal, they would easily become allies to the radical nationalist movement then demanding “self government now”, for Nigerians in Nigeria. Thus legalization of trade unions was itself a policy aimed at incorporating them into the colonial scheme of things. Similarly the policy of “guided democracy and limited intervention” of the military in 1975, which led to the establishment of the current NLC on February 28, 1978, was with the same intent.
Of concern for us here though is how trade unions can and do influence policies and the policy processes as a whole. Why do trade unions have to wield policy influence? State policies affect both trade unions’ members and trade unions as collective organisations. Thus, unions have to be interested in influencing the contents and forms of policies, in defence of rights already won, and to further their interests on matters that affect workers as citizens and as workers as well as those affecting unions as corporate entities.
2.3. The Policy Cycle and Processes
Policies have life in that they are born and die to be replaced by similar or quite different policies. This “life” of a policy could be considered as the Policy Cycle, with different interlocking stages which have different processes. Each stage, or component of the Policy Cycle involves different actors , these could of course include trade unions, especially where and when they realise the crucial need for policy engagement. The processes at each stage equally require different, albeit interlocking tools and skills, to be able to adequately engage and influence state policy.
The stages of the Policy Cycle are thus:
• Agenda Setting
• Formulation
• Adoption
• Implementation
• Evaluation
Agenda setting: this is the point of problem identification. It involves awareness raising and contestation over priority This stage could be initiated by the government, as is the case with many executive bills and administrative policies. They could as well be initiated by civil society, such as the Media Rights Agenda/Freedom of Information Coalition’s work on the FOI Bill which is today, after about a dozen years, the Freedom of Information Act, 2011. Trade unions also initiate this, particularly on wage-issues. While this is legitimate, not only do non-wage issues directly affect union members, but so many other economic policies, which we could be more proactive in engaging equally affect the real wages of workers;
Policy formulation: this is the stage at which policy starts moving from a diffuse sense of defining what the problem is, to trying to construct the solution that the policy is supposed to bear. It involves: interpretation or, framing of the identified problem; setting of the policy objectives and; towards meeting those set objectives, fashioning out propositions as options on strategies that would inhere in the policy;
Adoption: this is the stage of decision-making, subsequent to the policy formulation stage. It often is by the legislative or executive arm of government at different levels, but could be bi-partite or tri-partite and thus involving organised labour, as well;
Policy implementation: the major representative actor for government at this stage is the bureaucracy. It tries to ossify policy as given presenting it as; thus not possible to be influenced. But this is not necessarily so, particularly where and when trade unions have been very active in bringing their influence to bear at earlier stages in the cycle;
Policy evaluation: it is critical to determine the extent to which policies meet set policy objectives. This is both for the purpose of learning from the successes or failure of particular policies as well as for drawing public attention to the grave limitations of policies that trade unions have pointed out from the onset would be nothing but disastrous, such as the SAP and other neoliberal policies of government. Policy evaluation need not be only after implementation, i.e. summative. It should as well be formative, i.e. a form of monitoring while policy implementation is ongoing.
2.4. Policy influence and social reformation
I have pointed out earlier that policies of reforms have severe limitations when they are not tied to more thorough-going social transformation. It is however very difficult, if not impossible for the ruling elites in economically backward countries such as Nigeria to make that needed linkage of reformation-to-transformation. Indeed our history is replete with several declarations of such intent but which the reality of praxis have shown the other direction towards stagnation. Be that as it may, how trade unions engagement with the policy processes and thus securing of policy influence leads to some level of amelioration of the lives of working people and the strengthening of the working class could be gleaned from the different types of policies and how we have won some concessions from challenging them in recent times.
Trade unions have engaged with the following types of policies over the years:
Distributive policies: the struggle for re-distribution is ever constant in capitalist societies. Policies have been used as tools for effecting or blocking this. Trade unions have engaged with this directly by struggling for new minimum wages and combating wage freeze policies. They have indirectly battled this through protestations against the huge allowances of legislatives and demanding increased funding for public education;
Social policy: which is a distinctive form of distributive policies dwells on state policies that affect the welfare of citizens. Of particular importance are; healthcare, education, social security, & pensions. Organised labour has engaged with these through involvement in structures, mechanisms and processes; that led to establishing the National Health Insurance Scheme in 2005, of the social insurance trust fund, related to the Pensions Reform Act, and (particularly with regards to unions in the education sector) some minimal increases in government spending on education;
Regulatory policies: the most visible one which labour has consistently challenged is that of the deregulation of the downstream sector of the petroleum industry. The public sector reforms and privatization in general are also some of the regulatory policies that organised labour has attempted to influence.
It is noteworthy to stress here that while the foregoing show that we are not starting from zero, the limited extent of these engagements’ successes, as we all know, serve as a pointer to two things, which are not mutually exclusive. One is the abridged nature of the commitment of the country’s rulers to the citizenry. The other is that organised labour could probably have won more concessions if it were better equipped.
3.0. Prospects and challenges for unions’ engagement with state policy
It is necessary to understand the major challenges trade unions face that limit their ability to adequately influence policies in the interest of their members and the working class in general, for us to make propositions on the tools and skills needed to overcome these. It is however apt to point out that there are also prospects or opportunities for deepening policy influence.
3.1. Prospects for trades unions’ policy influence
Probably the most important of the contextual prospects for unions’ engagement with state policy in Nigeria today is the democratisation of the national polity. While there was room for engagement with state policy even during the military rule, this was decidedly constrained. The institutionalisation of the legislative arm of government as well as the expansion of room for engaging with the executives at different levels as well as the bureaucracy are elements of the context for policy engagement which organised labour has exploited, but only to an arguably minimal extent.
Related to the spate of democratisation are some of the reforms that have already been won, such as the Freedom of Information Act which, at least formally, broadens access to official information. Trade unions and other civil society organisations would need to concretely test the actuality of this freedom of information.
Along with democratisation, the national polity has witnessed decentralisation. Despite the shortcomings of Nigerian federalism, it is possible to engage with states’ governments and (even though on a more constrained plane) with LGAs in the federation. Indeed in some instances, partisan contestation between the federal and some states’ governments could be exploited by trades unions in the process of policy engagement.
The new information and communication technologies provide a highway of opportunities for influencing policy in two ways. On one hand the open a vast expanse of information which unions could need to further their positions in the setting of agenda or formulation of state policy. On the other hand, it provides trade unions with a platform for reaching an ever expanding audience of publics towards winning broad social appeal and support for their stands on policies. These include the possible use of bulk sms, facebook groups and pages, telephone calls, blackberry broadcasts and emails. Related to this is the expansion of spaces of globalisation from below, expressed through international structures and mechanisms for generating solidarity between workers and trade unions across the world.
3.2. Key problems affecting trades unions’ engagement with state policy
Trade unions face a wide range of challenges in engaging state policy. Some of these problems are external to the unions. A large number of these are internal.
3.2.1. External challenges
The major external challenges that unions could face include the following:
Political context: the context of the policy processes is of great import for any actor, particularly non-state actors that want to influence policy. Corruption is a major drawback to non-state actors’ policy influence. It is not however apt to consider countries like Nigeria as being so corrupt while there is no corruption in advanced capitalist countries for example. This is utterly false, as several news scoops have revealed in the UK, the US and several other Western countries. A major difference though is the mitigating role of institutionalising processes and mechanisms that make policy engagement more impersonal;
Extent of openness of the policy processes: this is related to the extent of institutionalization of the policy processes. It needs to be stressed that this extent is not divine but partly circumscribed or expanded through policy influence itself. The extent of institutionalised consultations and even participatory democracy, such as in budgeting in Porto Allegre, Brasil or Kerala, in India were won through policy engagement which was linked with overt political engagement. Policy is decidedly political and the policy processes are political processes, involving vested class (and non-class) interests, contending actors and institutional pressures. But they could be engaged in a strictly “technicalist” manner or from an organising approach. The later approach helps over time to expand the extent of the policy processes, while the former could keep trade unions on the fringes of the policy processes glass ceiling;
Limited (technical) legitimacy: legitimacy of (non-state) actors in the policy processes is crucial for their winning policy influence. There are basically four sources of policy influence legitimacy. These are; political, moral, legal and technical. Trade unions tend to be rather weak in their repertoire of the technical source. While the membership base of organised labour gives political legitimacy, its role as champion of the causes of the downtrodden provides moral authority and registration of trades unions as corporate bodies that could restrain trade in a sense ensures legal legitimacy, the weaknesses of unions’ propositions in terms of depth and expertise, aligned with the prejudice of trade unionists as “table bangers” could be said to rob them of much needed technical basis of legitimacy, particularly in Nigeria.
3.2.2 Internal challenges
There are close correlations between the external challenges and the internal challenges. The major internal challenges are:
Lack of (technical) capacity: trade unions generally have inadequate capacity for processing, analysing and generating the necessary kind of information for critical engagement with policymakers and other actors in the policy processes. This has a lot to do with the absence of functional research departments or units within the unions both singly and collectively;
Poor knowledge and inadequate concern with policy processes: few unions have requisite knowledge about the policy processes and many more even lack much concern about these. This situation is closely related to the lack of capacity but distinct from it. The two challenges however reinforce a vicious cycle of self-marginalisation;
The funding problem: critical engagement with policy requires funding. A number of unions hardly have enough funds for what are considered the more “line functions” of administration and organising. It could be argued though that for quite a number of unions, it is not so much a case of lack of funds as one of priority. It is not impossible particularly if unions in the same sector pull resources together to fund the needed research work and campaigns for aptly engaging with state policy;
The human resource problem: where unions have (functional?) research units/departments, these are grossly understaffed and the few staffers rather under-trained. This results in both quantitative and qualitative human resource deficits for policy engagement by the trade unions;
The problem of communication: communication is of the essence for policy engagement. Interventions of trades unions in the policy process need to take note of the different audiences and how to aptly pass across their message in language that elicit further dialogue, as much as possible, even when they are in disagreement with the state. Thus, such interventions should have the apt balance of technical jargons where necessary and simplicity without being simplistic. Interventions also need to be timely at each stage of the policy processes;
Poor traditions of alliance/coalition-building: there are ever-expanding spectra of non-state actors involved in different ways at different stages of the policy cycle with the increase in NGOs and the spread of “NGOism”. Trade unions have not learnt how to use alliances and possibly coalitions with these, effectively for broadening policy influence;
Episodic (non-strategic) approach to engagement: trade unions engagement with the policy processes is hardly ever strategic. Different stages are engaged, where and when they are at all, in spasmodic, episodic manners.
These challenges are quite daunting, but not insurmountable. Indeed a critical necessity for unions that intend to utilise the democratic space and expand this for their memberships and the working class as a whole is to be able to rise above these challenges.
Possible tools and skills for achieving this comprise the last section of the main body of this essay.
4.0 Engaging with state policy; tools and skills for trade unions
There are no magical portions for curing the “ills” or if you will, overcoming the obstacles that presently confront trades unions in engaging with state policy. The tools, skills and strategies that unions have to bring to bear require doing some things we already do, better. They also require that we introduce some practices that we have not hitherto considered as necessary.
There are elements of the challenges before us that we cannot wholly resolve, such as the external challenges. But we can significantly influence the re-constitution of their dynamics. There are others, bearing on internal inadequacies which we can more decisively confront. But even these would not be automatically resolved. Habits take time to change and entrenching new ways of work, which in a way is what policy engagement as an approach to our work would entail, would be faced by some extent of internal resistance to change. It is in this light that I would say the first thing needed most is political will to walk the talk of this workshop. Such political will requires leadership, but to be thorough-going and successful must come from bottom up, with the structures of the union, from the base to the apex, buying into the “project”. This for me is a major reason for commending NUPENG in bringing its branch level officers together for this workshop.
We now look at some key tools and skills, in the light of the foregoing:
4.1. Context assessment
The external situation that trades unions operate in to win policy influence need to be aptly understood. The external situation is both general and specific. That is to say that there are some contextual issues that could generally apply to state policies, such as the: macro-economic context; politico-legal realities; other non-state actors that could have some form of allied or antagonistic interests to that of the union’s quest of policy influence; formal and informal networks that bind several actors within and outside the implementing bureaucracy and; the way policy formulators and implementers think and their proclivities.
This is the broadest sense of context assessment. Where a trade union has its contextual assessments regularly updated, it serves as a very useful point of departure for engaging with different specific policies’ processes.
4.2. Policy processes mapping
Policy processes mapping is a form of specific context mapping. It however also goes beyond this as it addresses both the context and possible contents of the policy processes at each stage of the policy cycle, right from the onset.
It draws on the broader consummated context assessments to distil out specific context assessments, it then goes further. It is about strategic planning. The union should try identify what the issues at each of the five key stages of the policy cycle are and: how these could resonate with general public sentiments in relation to the union’s interest; the different actors at each stage and what there interests could be; possible actions they could take, possible allies and possible opponents; how the message of the union’s interest could be framed; possible scenarios of the resultant endpoint; possible decisive moments and how it could handle these; resources (financial, technical, human & political) that the union would require for its policy pursuit.
4.3. Research and evidence
Trade unions seriously need to build on their capacity and/or access to qualitative research. Research is crucial for providing evidence at different stages of the policy process to influence the options taken as being in line with union positions or for placing before the policymakers and the public the fact that those choices taken in contradiction to the union’s well thought out propositions have failed or are failing. Qualitative research is also key for the apt interpretation of evidence generated by different actors in the policy processes.
Thus, the need for functional research units/departments cannot be overemphasized. This can however, not be built over night and unions are not to fold their hands while building such, on the contrary, building such has to be part of a broader research strategy.
The use of existing research institutions and mechanisms is of great importance. Research reports from a number of institutes and institutions could provide excellent materials for context assessment as well as for elements of policy processes mapping. It is also necessary for trades unions to re-address the challenge of building the hitherto proposed NLC Labour Centre for Social and Economic Research (LACSER). Meanwhile, trades unions in the same or similar sectors could pull resources together for sector-specific research work that could be commissioned or conducted using active research methods.
4,4 Interventionist communication
In engaging policy, communication is meant to serve intervention that will broaden policy influence. Trade unions have to be very strategic in communication. The first place to start would be an evaluation of the extent of success or failure of earlier policy engagement-oriented communication. The main questions to address would be; how adequately were the union’s positions addressed to policymakers, allies, opponents and the general public at the different stages of the cycle?
Communication for policy influence would have to be: planned, based on the context assessment and policy processes mapping; packaged, in terms of envisioning & framing to inspire buy-ins by several other actors in the policy processes field; targeted, using several media including the press, the internet and advocacy visits; monitored entailing on-going evaluation of its effects in the course of the policy cycle &; evaluated, at the end of the policy cycle to properly assess its extent of effectiveness and for lessons drawn from this to be brought to bear in subsequent policy engagement efforts.
Thus, trade unions must have policy engagement communication strategies, which will entail such general elements as stated above and particular dimensions based on the specific policy’s characteristics, distilled from the policy processes mapping.
4.5. Networking as a fortress for policy engagement
The pivotal role of networks for building policy influence is indeed near unquantifiable. A trade union that horns its networking skills is very likely to be much more successful in engaging state policy than one which does not. Networks help to coalesce the strengths of different collectives (and individuals) while attenuating their different weaknesses.
Forging alliances (which could be bilateral with another organisation) or building coalitions (these are more multilateral by implication) are just two forms of networking. Trade unions could network with a broad array of actors for different purposes within the overall goal of specific or general policy influence-building. Examples of these include networks with: researchers or research institutions for evidence-building and interpretation; training institutes or CSOs for capacity building; solidarity support organisations (“donors”) for financial, material or technical assistance; specific policymakers that an history of relationships had been established with as means of working behind “enemy lines” &; journalists both for prompt dissemination of information and for having quick access informally, to information relevant for policy engagement.
4.6 Globalisation from below and the boomerang tactic
International working class solidarity and networking with pro-labour or international organisations (as well as some that might not necessarily be always pro-labour but might have a coincidence of interest with the union on a particular policy issue), is proving to be a veritable tool for building national policy influence. One of the general tactics used with this tool is called the “boomerang”. Another tactic which is specific to unions is that of Global Framework Agreements with a corresponding spread of Global Memorandums of Agreement.
The boomerang is when a trade union or any other civil society organisation in lets say country “A”, appeals to another organisation(s) in country “B” to put pressure on the government in country “A”, by mobilizing public opinion and lobbying the government in country “B”.
The Global (also called “International”) Framework Agreements are reached by Global Union Federations with multinational enterprises and could be invoked in affecting national state policy, within some context. Global Memorandums of Agreement are signed between multinational corporations and communities, albeit often with the intent of dousing radical engagements by these communities, as we have seen with Chevron & Shell in relation to communities in the Niger delta, since 2006. They however do provide some contextual framework that in some circumstances could be invoked in engaging policy.
The international networking of globalisation from below also helps provide unions with information on best practices in other lands that could be useful in engaging with national state policies.
4.7 The centrality of campaigns
A campaign is basically a project for making an issue the issue. To influence policy, it is thus necessary to integrate the different strands noted above i.e. approaching policy influence as policy engagement campaigns.
This would entail: defining the policy interest of the union as a campaign message; defining the targets and other possible beneficiaries (as well as possible losers) from the formulation and implementation of the policy objectives in line with the union’s aims; formulation of a campaign communication strategy; fashioning out a campaign “dramaturgy”; committing specific resources to the policy engagement campaign and; carrying along membership in pursuit of policy influence.
5.0 In lieu of a conclusion
This paper has put in perspective the relationships between the state, the working class, state policies, policy influence and reforms. It identified the evolution of states as being characteristic of class antagonism and thus points at possible limits to influencing state policy in the interest of working people. This it did to avoid sowing seeds of illusions while also placing the ultimate goal of the working class self-emancipation in view, even as we tackle the much necessary struggle for reforms.
The paper further showed that despite these limitations, a lot could be done in terms of winning concessions for union members and the working class as a whole, here and now and that the spaces for this must not be handled with disdain. It stressed the fact that challenges that pose as obstacles to engaging state policy are numerous being both external and internal, but are not insurmountable. It posited key tools and skills required for overcoming these obstacles.
It is hoped that with the earlier group activity which accompanied the paper, you would be able to better situate the general views of this paper to the specific needs of your great union in its quest for broadened policy influence in Nigeria.
Thank you so much for listening.
16th August, 2011
Enugu
*being a paper presented at the NUPENG/FES 2-day workshop on state policy engagement for trade unionists, held on August 16-17, 2011 @ The Maybach Hotel & Resort, Enugu
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