Baba Aye's

Introduction It is very easy to forget nowadays that the earliest trade unions were actually combinations of workers who had skills in some trade or the other, but whom were then sucked into informal labour relations by the employers who had big machines and factories. These workers had no contracts of employment, worked for up to 18hours in some cases in the mines and factories and were exploited to their bone marrows. They then came together towards the end of the 18th century and at the beginning of the 19th century, in Britain, to form what was then called “trade clubs”, which had to be secret so that they would not be arrested or even killed by thugs loyal to the employers. The same situation occurred although in a different context, with the origins of trade unionism and trade unions in Nigeria. It has been established that the first trade union in Nigeria was the Mechanics Mutual Aid and Improvement Association, existed 29 years before the Nigeria Civil Service Union which ma...

The revolutionary upheavals in the Middle East & North Africa (MENA) region these past few months confirm the truism that there are times in history when three months could seem like thirty years. The wind of “massquakes” in the region: swept dictators in Tunisia and Egypt out of power within weeks of protests and strikes; shattered the myth of Gaddafi’s invincibility, while he stubbornly holds on to the shell of power, taking the country down the brinks of civil war; forced wide-ranging reforms in Saudi Arabia in an attempt to starve it off and; shakes Bahrain, Yemen, and Syria to their foundations with simmering echoes in Algeria, Jordan and Morocco. “Revolution” which had come to be seen as a thing of the past with the marketed triumph of neoliberal capitalism has now come to hold the attention of the world, inspiring millions across the globe. The (ongoing) revolutions in each of these countries have emerged from the concrete realities of their socio-economic and political c...

The dust seems to have settled on the prolonged “pension reform revolt”. On Wednesday October 27, the new Pension Act which increased the retirement age from 60 to 62 years was passed into law by the French government. This occurred despite a groundswell of general strikes and mass protests which showed the discontent of the immense majority of people in France with the pension reform in particular and the age of austerity sweeping through France, as with the rest of Europe and indeed the world, in general. This article captures some of the highlights of this pitched class struggle in France and draws possible lessons for an unfolding future as workers and trade unions across Europe and the world as a whole, square up to the challenges of a period of anti-working-class attacks in the garb of “austerity”. These would include: the impact of changing forms of work relations on how the struggle unfolded; the nature of solidarity which buoyed the movement; the evolving strategies of work...

Poor commuters using the public transport system and workers delivering transit services, including light rail and bus drivers are facing hard times in the United States. But they are also beginning to organise and fight to ameliorate their conditions and the salvage the sector. This is in the wake of the sharp rise of fuel in 2008 and the simultaneous Great Recession. The attendant difficulties of livelihood to the economic crisis and rising fuel prices have made the need for an efficient and affordable public transport system a palpable one for millions of Americans. The response of the American State and private transit agencies has however been to drastically reduce funding for the sector, laying off workers and cutting down on supply and services rendered, due to the low or near absence of any significant profit accruing for them. This is a classic case of putting capitalist greed over and above the needs of the teeming mass of the country’s population. Over 80% of the transit a...

Restiveness is spreading through Chinese firms across Africa, as cases of high handedness, and even the shootings of agitating workers assumes rampant proportions, especially in Zambia, where workers have been shot thrice in the last few months. This have led to some tensions in Afro-Chinese relations, even while the states, which rely more and more on Chinese capital, try to explain away this despicable acts. There seems to be a palpable need for the trade union movement on the African continent to take a position on such untenable highhandedness and violence in industrial relations. Examples abound that buttress this need. Last year, in Mozambique, African workers were made to wear badges inscribed with the word escravo which means “slave” in Portuguese, by the China Henan International Cooperation Group (CHICO). The company eventually explained away the incident as one of mistranslation, but most of the workers that were affected, describing the work regime they suffered in CHICO...

Introduction The proportion of the workforce in formal employment which had never been very significant in Nigeria has further declined in the past three decades, starting from the period of the Bretton Woods Institutions-inspired Structural Adjustment Programme, with consequent expansion of workers within orbits of informal labour and employment relations. This paper considers how informal workers have been and are being organized; situating this within the broader picture of the problems and prospects these pose for envisioning and broadening the capacities of workers in their struggle(s) for better working conditions and a better society. The informal economy has been dominant in Nigeria since the late 19th century advent of capitalism and introduction of modern work forms in the country. The process of post-traditional urbanization which commenced from the beginning of the 20th century took on added steam in post-colonial Nigeria, particularly from the period of structural adjust...