Category: gmoses

As President Obasanjo Assumes Chair of African Union

by Greg Moses
09 Jul 2004

http://austin.indymedia.org/newswire/display/17091/index.php

Labor agitation in Nigeria wins concessions as the financial press complains of incessant strikes and the Nigerian president increases his power in African affairs.

Nigerian oil managers won the right to serve as “production superintendents” for the European petroleum giant Total-Elf-Fina after an all-night bargaining session Wednesday that was reportedly brokered by the Nigerian ministry of labor.

After the agreement was reached, the company resumed its Nigerian operations, which account for ten percent of the nation’s oil output. Total-Elf-Fina had shut down its Nigerian operations on Friday, July 2, citing “safety concerns” over the labor impasse.

The prized management positions had previously been reserved for expatriate employees, according to the Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria (PENGASSA), the “white collar” union of Nigerian gas and oil workers. According to reports from union sources, salaries paid to expatriate (foreign) managers were largely responsible for the industry’s rising costs.

The concession from Total-Elf-Fina follows complaints in the Nigerian Business Times that Nigerian labor has been guilty of “incessant strike actions” that “have had devastating effects on the economy of the nation.”

According to the Business Times report by Lucas Ajanaku and Odidison Omankhanlen, Nigeria has seen an unprecedented rate of strike actions during the past five years. A recent three-day strike over rising gas prices, “is said to have cost the nation consecutively N200 billion with at least, one life, lost,” claim the authors, who note that the loss of a single life is the lowest casualty rate for a strike in recent memory.

If the financial press in Nigeria is weary of labor action, other reports suggest that Nigerian civil society was angered by labor’s decision to call off the most recent protest strike after only three days. The Nigerian Labor Congress (NLC) suspended the strike after winning a court ruling that ordered the government to enforce price caps on gasoline.

As with the rest of the world, gas prices have been going up in Nigeria, but many Nigerians argue that the government should keep the gas prices lower through subsidies financed by windfall profits earned from sales of Nigerian crude. Nigerian citizens are aware that the government makes enormous profits from the “upstream” sale of oil, and they widely expect to see those profits plowed back into “downstream” subsidies for their daily consumption of gasoline.

In an article separate from the one mentioned above, Omankhanlen reports that one Nigerian activist who participated in NLC deliberations said there was, “no justification for suspending the strike, stressing that the government would take them as jesters, for the fact that the strike had not made any meaningful impact.”

“How could one ever contemplate suspending the strike,” said another activist quoted by Omankhanlen. “This was not our arrangement. People we have mobilised will take us as unserious people. I will never have anything to do with labour again. And remember, this is not the first time this is happening. We cannot afford to be fooled again.”

Earlier this year, the NLC negotiated with the government to set price caps on gasoline, but independent oil marketers have not adhered to the agreement. A July 15 hearing has been set to resume court deliberations on the matter.

Returning to the article jointly written by Ajanaku and Omankhanlen, the authors concede that there are few realistic alternatives to strike action in a nation where politics tend to follow the influence of oil money. In such a context, labor cannot effectively lobby against big oil in the legislature, nor can it rely on judicial or police authorities to stand up independently against multi-billion dollar oil interests.

“The pursuit of legal approach by labour as an alternative dispute resolution avenue suffers yet its own shortcomings,” write Ajanaku and Omankhanlen, “government hardly obey court orders while the process of obtaining justice in the country is rather long and unwieldy.”

The recent overnight bargaining session between unionists and Total-Elf-Fina reportedly took place at Port Harcourt, the city where Ken Saro-Wiwa was hanged with eight other activists in 1995. “Nor imprisonment nor death can stop our ultimate victory,” pledged Saro-Wiwa in his famous closing statement to the Nigerian Military Appointed Tribunal that sentenced him to death for his activism against Shell Oil.

“A worker without a future and a say in matters relating to his own growth is a slave,” argues PENGASSAN President Louis Brown Ogbeifun in a February speech.

“Time has come for labour to have a rethink and a rebirth, if we do not want to be swallowed by the negative impact of global processes,” says Brown Ogbeifun in the speech posted at the PENGASSAN website. “Staying afloat will depend on our strength, unity, focus and proactive fight against injustices and not against ourselves, for a house divided against itself can never stand. If the advanced nations want us to accept their pills of globalization, then they must be transparent, fair, just and objective in adaptation of globalization ideals to the reality of our background. They must come to equity with clean hands and stop seeing Africa as a dumping ground for imperialists left over.”

Exxon-Mobil this week replaced the manager of its Nigerian operations in a move that coincides with an impasse in that company’s labor negotiations. On July 1, the petroleum unions issued a 21-day warning to their Exxon-Mobil subsidiary and announced that workers would be wearing red, boycotting lunch, and engaging in a two-hour work stoppage as signs of solidarity in preparation for a strike, should one be needed.

Reporter Victor Ahiuma-Young, writing for the Nigerian Vanguard, quotes an un-named source as saying that relations between Nigerian unions and the Exxon-Mobil subsidiary had deteriorated since Mobil was taken over by Exxon. In addition, sources allege that a provisional settlement between unions and the company was scuttled by interference from an official of the government-owned oil company, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation.

It is widely reported that Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo personally oversees the Nigerian oil business. Obasanjo last week was named chair of the African Union Commission during its three-day summit in Ethiopia. According to a summary report posted at the United Nations’ IRIN website, Obasanjo promised to take tough stands, “on hot spots like Sudan, Cote d’Ivoire and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.”

“These issues demonstrate our determination to be proactive. Without peace, there is no development,” said Obasanjo,

Meanwhile this week, negotiations with Shell Oil were reported to be “going well.”

See also:

http://austin.indymedia.org/newswire/display/17062/index.php

PENGASSAN: Petroleum & Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria
http://www.pengassan.org/index.HTM

Membership of PENGASSAN is drawn from senior and middle management employees in various oil and gas companies in Nigeria. Each company registered by the National Secretariat constitutes a branch of PENGASSAN. Currently, we have 98 branches with total members of 20,100.

“Time has come for labour to have a rethink and a rebirth, if we do not want to be swallowed by the negative impact of global processes. Staying afloat will depend on our strength, unity, focus and proactive fight against injustices and not against ourselves, for a house divided against itself can never stand. If the advanced nations want us to accept their pills of globalization, then they must be transparent, fair, just and objective in adaptation of globalization ideals to the reality of our background. They must come to equity with clean hands and stop seeing Africa as a dumping ground for imperialists left over.”

“A worker without a future and a say in matters relating to his own growth is a slave.”

“In a world of mergers and acquisitions, labour is de-merging; where governments are coming together in unity as the European Union, African Union, on the other hand labour sings songs of disunity.”

–Dr. Louis Brown Ogbeifun [President’s Address Feb. 26-27, 2004]

“Instead of thinking about building more refineries as a proactive strategy, the leadership found it more auspicious to invest in the importation of fuel. The end effect of the above was a total collapse of the refineries.”

“For the refineries to work efficiently there must be:
§ Reduction of government’s interference in the operational processes
§ Resolution of all Niger Delta problems to guarantee crude supplies.
§ contracts to be signed by the management of the refineries with successful TAM in using both the government and stick approach
§ Turn Around Maintenance to be done on schedule using the builders and refinery workers
§ Retaining of operations staff whose fears of neflects might have a damaging effect on productivity
§ Building of more refineries by government and leasing them to private operators. After all Kuwait and Venezualla successful refineries are run this way. This is to gradually and ultimately make Nigeria a net exporter of finished petroleum products.
§ Encouraging private investors to build refineries
§ Legislation to compel multinational companies to refine part of their crude locally and encourage exportation of our products.”

“Government must reach out on constructive engagement, to give the people a sense of belonging. Government in dealing with the situation in Niger Delta must use a four prung approach involving political, economical, social and security instruments, rather than criminalizing everything done in the Niger Delta.”

“While commending the multinational companies for the huge sums being expended, there tends to be a disconnection between them and the people. Contracts must be executed in qualitative terms. There must be persistent dialogue and not using damage control measures in times of crisis. Even in peace time, MNC must keep the flame of dialogue aglow. The usage of the indigenes as contract and casual staff must be discouraged. There is need to dignify labour.”

“Oil spillage must be properly managed to prevent depredation of the environment. Spillage must be accurately and promptly reported.”

“The youths must also lay down their arms, learn to resolve issues through constructive dialogue and engage government more meaningfully in areas of infrastructural development. The attitude of some youth portrays them as being interested only in multi-million naira which is to be shared and which undermines the objective of the struggles of the genuine Nationalists who are fighting for the emancipation of the Niger Delta from the shackles of oppression, manipulation and marginalization.”

“The fighters after the tribal wars usually have no more jobs and this leads them into evil vices such as piracy, hostage taking and seeking ransome, venting their anger on oil locations, killing of oil workers e.t.c.”

“With methodical patience, constructive engagement, transparency and sincerity of purpose, the problems of the Niger Delta can be resolved without further blood shed.”

–BREAKING THE CIRCUIT OF FUEL INCREASES BY DR. BROWN OGBEIFUN, June 6, 2004

NLC: Nigeria Labor Congress

http://www.nlcng.org/affiliateunions.htm

“The NLC reiterates its position that the nation can maintain the old prices of fuel by using a fraction of excess crude earnings to stabilize domestic prices. Nigerians had voted for democracy and good governance to assure their welfare, and therefore cannot subject their fate and well being to the vagaries of so-called market forces that translate to profiteering by marketers and lining the pockets of corrupt government officials.”

–Salihu M. Lukman, Acting General Secretary NLC, June 18, 2004

“I have had to make enormous sacrifices. There is the disruption of my family life through frequent travels. The more serious is the setbacks on the job. Following a strike in 1999, myself and other union executives were posted out of JUTH. I was sent to a comprehensive health centre in Gindiri, a remote village, as a vengeful gesture by management. They thought this would immobilize me and subvert my union work.

“While in Gindiri I stayed two years without an office, only just reporting for work and staying under the tree. I was provided with a place that is not up to a toilet in my house, but was still kicked out. This is my fifth year there. I still stay in a house with a pit toilet and without light and water.

“But I am not deterred. The message to women in unions is never to be deterred by hurdles and de-motivators.”

–MRS. LADI ILIYA , VICE PRESIDENT, NIGERIA LABOUR CONGRESS (NLC)

Undated Press Clip:

Labour Minister Indicts Multinational Firms
From Juliana Taiwo in Abuja

Minister of Labour and Productivity, Dr. Muha-mmed Hassan Lawal, has accused multinational companies operating in the country of massive repatriation of their profits to their home countries leaving nothing behind for Nigeria.

The Minister made the accusation when the management of Heineken from the Netherlands paid him a courtesy visit in his office in Abuja yesterday.

Lawal regretted that after over 60 years of the company’s operations in Nigeria with about N40 billion annual turnover, not much of that was ploughed back into the Nigerian economy.

“Multinational companies have been known to make so much money in the country only to take it away to their own country for further development leaving us, the host country to suffer”, he said.

Lawal stressed that henceforth his Ministry would insist on communities hosting any multinational to be fully compensated in terms of improving their housing needs, education of their children and social life. He also promised to regularly embark on facility visits to these areas to ascertain things for himself.

Report on Strike Action of June/July 2003:

“The strike action lasted eight grueling days. In terms of scope ,duration and effect, it goes down in contemporary Nigerian labour history as the most effective and the most costly too. Over sixteen lives were lost nation-wide and earnings in hundreds of billions were lost in the private sector alone ( according to MAN) as the nation was completely shut down.”

Nigerian Press

NgEx.Com List of Media Online
http://www.ngex.com/news/newspapers.htm

AllAfrica
http://allafrica.com/

BNW: BiafraNigeriaWorld
http://news.biafranigeriaworld.com/

Daily Champion
http://www.champion-newspapers.com/

Daily Independent
http://www.independentng.com/

Daily Sun
http://www.sunnewsonline.com/

Daily Times
http://www.dailytimesofnigeria.com/

NewsWatch
http://newswatchngr.com/

Nigeria World
http://nigeriaworld.com/

Guardian
http://www.ngrguardiannews.com/

This Day
http://www.thisdayonline.com/

Vanguard
http://www.vanguardngr.com/

in the Annual Korean Labor Wars

By Greg Moses

http://austin.indymedia.org/newswire/display/17062/index.php

Two-thousand Korean bank workers boarded fifty buses this week and took their strike to a training center on the outskirts of Seoul, where still, “it looked quite crowded,” said a union official speaking by telephone.

“There was serious fear of a police blitzkrieg,” explains Kim Sung-jin, director of external cooperation for the Federation of Korean Trade Unions (FKTU).

The bank workers, many of them women, were confined in a tall building at the HanMi or KorAm building in Seoul, where there was not much space for their 12-day-old sit in. Lately, government officials had warned that the strike was wearing their patience. So union leadership, fearing a “safety issue” moved the sit-in away from the city center.

Also in Seoul, a Saturday night teachers’ union “sleep in” near the “Blue House” (Korean equivalent of the “White House”), found teachers outnumbered by police two-to-one: “If we have a demonstration, the police demonstrate for us,” says Kim Yong-kook, director of welfare for the Korean Teachers and Educational Worker’s Union (FTU), also speaking by telephone. “They always have two or three police for every teacher.”

Pounded by heavy rain from Typhoon Mindulle, 1,500 teachers moved into a subway station, where they were blockaded all night by 3,000 police. “It was very hot in there,” says Kim. “There was not much air.” In the morning, teachers held an outdoor rally, before returning home about noon.

In both actions, workers report difficulty getting the right people to the bargaining table. Teachers say the Minister of Education is the only one with the power to address their concerns over teaching hours and private school regulation. “The Education Minister should attend the meetings with teachers,” says FTU’s Kim. “But he never attends.”

(In primary grades and middle school, the teachers are asking for 18 hours of class time per week. In high school, 16 hours. For more background see Counterpunch, July 4.)

A similar situation is happening with the bank workers. In the face of a takeover by Citigroup, workers at HanMi/KorAm want assurances of job security, bank independence, and continued listing of their banks on the Korean stock exchange. But the Korean management can’t deliver these goods, and Citigroup officials aren’t coming to the table, says FKTU’s Kim.

Meanwhile, warnings from capitalist quarters were repeated twice last week in the pages of the Korea Times: unless Korean labor simmers down, global investors might recant pledges to “expand their investments” on the peninsula. Capital might simply move to more destitute terrain, where workers are less demanding. In this case, China.

The charge that Korean labor is active has some evidence behind it. During this annual season of contract renewal in Korea, migrant workers continue a 230-day-old sit-in, auto workers went on strike, a teacher’s union taught anti-war classes, the minimum wage was hiked by 13 percent, the five-day work-week of 40 hours became a matter of law, Koreans have withdrawn more than two billion dollars from the banks that have been taken over by Citigroup, and airline unions promised they would not transport troops or war tools to Iraq. These are only highlights.

“These Korean unions make our unions look like the PTA!” exclaims one Counterpunch reader via email.

It was the financial worker’s strike that especially provoked one economist to complain to Korea Times reporter Kim Yon-se: “It is nonsense that there are labor unions at financial service companies.” Such unions simply don’t exist in good capitalist places like the USA or Hong Kong. To which the chief of the Office of Investment added, “The abolishment of labor unions in Korea is very difficult.”

But the threats from capital to withhold their investments, and the way the threats are reported in the financial press, remind us how our world is ordered by a deadly double standard. If workers withdraw their previously-pledged labor, it is reported as “labor unrest.” If capital threatens to withdraw its not-yet-paid investment, it is treated as “fair warning.” In this double standard world, profit travels without a passport, anywhere it pleases. Workers, on the other hand, have always much explaining to do.

The financial press reserves no misgivings for bank czars who get together and threaten to cut off funds to an entire country. Bank workers, on the other hand, apparently, should confine their conversation to football and home improvement.

“They don’t want workers organized,” says Kim of FKTU. “It is very simple-minded, cold-blooded neo-liberalism: ‘You keep your mouth shut. Whatever we decide, you accept it.’ That kind of nonsense we cannot accept. If the USA is the champion of democracy and representation, then these principles should be respected by USA’s Citigroup.”

Remember the labor theory of value? You know that quaint assertion that no capitalist ever banked a buck not produced in the first place by a worker? What does the financial press think about that? Isn’t it nonsense for the financial press to promote a world order where capital takes profit from who it pleases, transfers wealth where it pleases, and acts as if workers were only the takers, never the creators of capitalist wealth in the first place?

Funny and illogical were the words used by an unnamed financial regulator to describe the workers’ demand that their bank not be taken out of the Korea Stock Exchange. “The issue of listing or de-listing fully depends on the decision of the management,” he scolded.

Yet, despite scolding and warning, financial workers have not backed down. They argue that independent listing is crucial to “transparency.” In other words, they want to see what Citigroup is doing with Korean cash flow. The workers’ actions would be funny and illogical if one presumed that the money in the bank didn’t belong to them in the first place.

Writing in Asia Times, David Scofield echoes concerns that Korean unions are guilty of “bad behavior.” With China sitting right next door, Korean capital is moving in “a veritable exodus” to that land of cheap and non-militant labor.

“The tendency of South Korea’s unionists to resort to confrontation rather than compromise in pursuit of their demands is weakening the nation’s economic competitiveness at a time when regional competition has never been higher,” writes Scofield. Hyundai and Kia workers had actually proposed (but did not get) wages that would exceed those of auto workers in the USA.

Yet Scofield admits that labor unions have played a significant role in democratizing Korea. And they do have a legitimate gripe, he says, when it comes to “the sorry state of the nation’s under-funded social welfare programs.” Yet, while Scofield scoffs at proposals to capture five percent of corporate profits to pay for more social investment, he offers no alternative solution.

Analysts who get their ideas placed in the corporate press seem unable to put themselves in the shoes of workers. While they can scoff and scold labor, they have no lectures prepared for capital. The workers, as usual, must speak for themselves.

“We are living in this country as working women,” begins the Declaration of the Seoul Women’s Trade Union that was founded in 1999. “Most of us are temporally-hired workers, part-timers, dispatched workers, intern-employees, underpaid and low-skilled workers at small businesses with less than five employees or the jobless.”

“From the moment of knocking the door of job markets to retirement, we continuously face frequent and various discriminations just for one reason; we were born as women in this male-dominated nation. Inhumane treatments, sexual violence and low-skilled jobs are what we routinely have to go through at the workplace. For all, we never gave up our dreams of leading a life as human.”

Or consider the words of Korean migrant workers, who call the Seoul women their inspiration: “We have nothing now. So far, socially we have thoroughly been alienated from the law and system in this society. That is the reason why we can stand up.”

I also spoke briefly by telephone to the anonymous author of the past weeks’ “struggle reports” that have been posted at the website of the Korean migrant workers union and distributed via Indymedia [see: migrant.nodong.net]. “You have to call me at night,” he apologized. “During the day I have to go to protests.” Does an economist want to tell him that Korean workers accept no compromises?

“Friday at noon the result of the [minimum wage] negotiations was published: just 641,840 Won ($ 563),” says the struggle report of June 25-27. “So, many workers, still there from the night before, got really angry about the scanty result and left the scene under strange abuses.” From the workers’ point of view, the results of that battle were de-moralizing, not uncompromising.

Back at FKTU headquarters in Seoul, Kim says that a statistical survey of the number of labor disputes would show a fairly steady annual rate of about 320 cases per year, a number he says is down from peaks of the last decade.

“I guess it’s a sort of comparative analysis,” says Kim in response to allegations that Korean workers are too militant. “Korean unions raise their voices to have their fair share and secure their rights, while in some developing countries, especially in Asia, workers are not very well organized or strong enough to represent workers complaints. In comparison, it is easy to say that Korean unions are radical and militant, so they say they’ll move their investments to other countries.”

“And what they say is partly true,” concedes Kim. “Yet they still find that Korea is an attractive market and that Korean human resources are quite good.”

“We also understand the challenges coming from outside,” continues Kim. “So I think we are in a state of transition, moving away from quite a bit of action in the 1990s concerning wage increases. I am foreseeing that we are reaching a more mature stage of industry relations with reduced labor disputes.”

The number one issue for the bank workers is job security. They do not want to be “downsized” by a Citigroup merger. The next important issue is their bank’s independence. So this is not a dispute about pay. It is about labor’s right to affect mulitnational policy. And it is the first strike ever by the workers at KorAm.

In the big industries, especially the ones that are increasingly owned by multinationals, Kim says radical activity continues because management, “is not serious enough in listening to the other side.”

Take the Citigroup approach, for example. “Sadly, Citigroup is simply ignoring the union,” says Kim. “If such things happen, the dispute can only be prolonged.”

Instead of double standards from the financial press, we need some plain talk about what kind of world humans deserve to build. As Kim points out, the ironies are especially striking, if you will, when big capital comes cruising for profit and flying the American flag, too. What do they care about democracy and representation?

When capitalists cross borders, they are praised by the financial press as entrepreneurs, even ambassadors of freedom. But when workers follow, they’re called illegal immigrants. Multinational corporations are taken for granted. Multinational people are rounded up for questioning and deportation.

What we need is a world where labor gets to live at least as freely as capital. And that’s why this week’s Korean wars are important struggles for workers everywhere. As for capitalists who openly threaten to retaliate against nations that harbor militant workers; why, there oughtta be a law!

Korean Labor Won’t Back Down

July 4, 2004

Counterpunch

By GREG MOSES

Twenty-five teachers from the Korean Teachers and Education Worker’s Union (KTU), who were just released from jail Thursday evening, are planning to resume their protest Saturday with an overnight vigil near the Ministry of Education (MOE), says a KTU source, who was reached by telephone at the union’s headquarters in Seoul….