Baba Aye's

Introduction The West African Health Sector Unions’ Network held its 10 th plenary session at the Rwandan Trade Unions Confederation headquarters on May 14-16, 2013. Members-unions were represented by statutory delegates from the: Burkinabe Midwives’ Trade Union; Health Services Workers’ Union of TUC Ghana (HSWU); National Private Sector Health Workers’ Union of Liberia (NPSHWUL); Medical and Health Workers’ Union of Nigeria (MHWUN); Rwandan Health Workers’ Union (RHWU) and; Sierra Leone Health Services Workers Union (SLEHWSU), while officials of the Public Services International Regional Office for Africa and Arab Countries, member-unions of the Rwandan National Coordinating Committee of the Public Services International as well as the national leadership of the Rwandan Trade Unions Confederation graced the opening session of the programme. The Representative of the Rwandan Hon. Minister of Public Services and Labour, presented a keynote address and declared the Conference op...

by Baba Aye Once again, workers across the length and breadth of Nigeria will join workers of all lands in commemorating May 1, as the International Workers’ Solidarity Day, better known as May Day. It is, or at least should be a day to reflect on our struggles as the toiling class, and to express our solidarity, with which we can bring to birth a new world on the ashes of the dying but far from dead old world of capital, which we live in today. This article (which draws from an earlier article of mine in The Health Worker of May 2007), attempts to put the origins and significance of this our day , in perspective. The celebration of the May Day as well as the practice of setting a day aside for the demonstration of workers solidarity, go way back beyond the historic events of Haymarket Square in 1886 and the subsequent resolution of the founding congress of the Second International in 1889, which initiated May I, with effect from 1890 as what we now know as the Internatio...