Several people on the left, including myself, have lost hope in the leadership of trade unions and the two trade union centres: NLC and TUC. This stems from multiple causes. The NLC leadership will declare a 2 day strike and call it off in half a day. And sometimes they call for strikes and cancel it at the last minute. They also present demands based on workers’ needs, but always end up settling for something way lower. There could be more issues to raise by rank-and-file members of trade unions. But this article is not about the trade unions. It centres on building an anti-capitalist movement. Radical trade union leadership would be good for workers’ struggles. But that in itself is neither sufficient nor even necessary for the revolutionary working class politics needed to win system change.
Labour unions have a history of over 200 years. They were the first steps of the workers’ movement towards sustained organisation to fight for their rights at the workplace. The earliest unions were in formed in Britain to challenge the unilateral powers of the bosses during the first industrial revolution. Ever since then, they have been able to win some reforms at the workplace. These include reducing the amount of working hours and ending child labour as a normal feature of the world of work.
Trade unions have even stepped out of the factory, offices and other workplaces, realising that decisions in the broader polity impact on what happens at work, and also out of commitment to the greater good of all working people. In Nigeria, for example, some labour unions were part of the pro-democracy movement which fought to end military rule in the 1980s and 1990s. While all these achievements are great, one thing that has never been on the agenda of the leadership of any labour union, and which is to never be, is to end capitalism as a system. Labour unions are there to fight the symptoms and while they can do a very good job doing that, their leaderships will never fight the disease, except if things get beyond their control.
Employers would prefer not to have labour unions in their enterprises. But if they cannot stop that, they will use all ideological and practical methods to promote the self-policing of workers by workers. This will include co-optation in different ways. Methods for this could range from compromising leaders of the union, to sabotaging radical workers who can become troublesome leaders and propping up other leaders that will be more favorable to collaborating with management. Management could also promote the forming of yellow unions and discrediting unions that respond to the yearnings of rank-and-file members through a variety of means.
Of course, it is not every labour movement that starts with their leaders being sellouts. Workers and their unions have faced repression in the hands of employers and the state from the very beginning.
Also, union leaders at times rationalise the decisions they take as being beneficial to the workers in the sectors they represent, and do not bother about the general impact of these on the working people as a class. For example, unions in the oil sector have supported the increase in fuel pump price most times. They believe it will translate to better wages, bonuses and general working conditions for oil and gas workers, amongst other things.
Lastly, labour leaders occupy a mediatory role between the capitalists and rank-and-file workers. They are not only in-between both, they also hope to become as wealthy and influential as the bosses. This makes them ideologically susceptible, especially when several of them hope to find a space in the oppressive political and social structure they are supposed to be fighting, such as becoming governors, legislators or even simply as special or not so special advisers at national or state level. If you go to most states of the federation today, the senior special advisers on labour to governors are former trade union leaders.
So, for us as working-class activists and revolutionary youths, we must never forget that while labour unions are key to winning the short-term goal of improving the conditions of workers, they are not anti-capitalist. This means that they cannot be relied on or expected to be a force for revolutionary change, which is the only way to finally resolve the class struggle in our class’s favour by overthrowing the capitalist class of vampires who exploit us.
This is not just a problem for the long-term. It also means that they will never stop wavering at critical moments, as they have been doing, to the unending disappointment of scores of millions of Nigerians. The challenge for the revolutionary left within the working class movement is thus to build strong rank-and-file movements and a revival of revolutionary socialist ideas with vision of liberation beyond crumbs of bread from the master’s table.
by Emmanuel IRO-OKORO
