The Minister of Labour and Employment, Dr Chris Ngige, said the federal government will enforce the “no-work, no-pay” rule with a view to containing incessant strikes resulting in unnecessary disruption in various sectors. The Minister of Labour and Employment, Chief Chris Ngige, made this disclosure while speaking with State House correspondents at the end of the weekly meeting of the Federal Executive Council, presided over by President Muhammadu Buhari at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.
This is said to be captured in the Trade Disputes of the Federation. Once the law becomes active, any worker who embarks on industrial action will lose his or her pay for that period, while the period of the strike will not be pensionable. He said the decision formed part of the report of a technical committee established on April 27, 2016.
He said, “First and foremost, the report emphasised the need to implement the law on ‘no work, no pay. The ‘no work, no pay’ is not a rule, neither is it a policy. It is a law captured on Trade Disputes Act of Federation."
“Section 43 to be precise says that workers have a right to disengage from an employer if there is a break down in discussions or negotiation. But for the period that the worker does so, the employer should not pay and those periods are to be counted as non-pensionable times in the period of work.
“So council today re-emphasised that that law is still in force and that it should be brought to the knowledge of workers in the public and private sector, especially those in the public sector.We have to do that because of the spate of industrial crisis we have suffered in the last two months, when we had plethora of strikes all over the place. So council has said this should be reemphasised to workers so that they will know. Meanwhile for the strike embarked upon the last time, we will see what we can do about that because there is a law in place.”
Ngige said his ministry was also fishing out industrial unions that did not have prescribed time limit for their elected officers.
“Council looked at another recommendation in terms of people who are permanently doing union activities, they are presidents of trade unions for life and they sit tight, criticise those who are trying to do third term or fourth term while they themselves are sitting tight. It was agreed that my ministry should continue with our work in terms of fishing out the unions that don’t have constitutions that prescribed time limit for their elected officers. Such unions should be made to comply with the law, so that people can be elected, they serve out their term and other people will take their place."
