ENDING STRIKES- The UK experience
By Adewale Areago
If I should recall UK train service. It is the most unionized sector in UK economy. When labor laws was changed to prevent long sit-at-home strikes, unions got around it by doing two days a week strike. What annoyed people was that the train service has different lines and dispute can be with a particular line but the strike we covered everywhere. The whole nation would put on standstill. Lines started using managers and supervisors as stand in workers to get some lines going.
How did UK get over the unions? The answer is simple, unions were taking advantage of UK having one train company which was also a publicly owned, British Rail. The end of British Rail (BR) brought the end of unions needless strikes. You have train drivers union, train signal workers union, train conductors union and train ticket and other staff unions. All of them can strike at different times over different disputes, usually pay rise.
When BR operations was privatized by selling off lines and routes to different companies, union national stikes ended.
What was applied to BR can be used in putting an end to ASUU and other unions strike in our universities. What is needed is granting some universities financial independent and governing. All universities have boards already what is needed is for them to be self financing.
That is, tuition fees they charge should cover their cost. University can make extra money by doing research which is extremely lacking now. I will suggest a new position of executive officer should be created to take care of money aspect of running the university. As you know, there are duplication and redundancy in running of our universities. For example, a law lecturer can be employed in law school but will be made available to accounting department, business school and management school rather than each department hiring a law lecturer. This is will be one of the aspect of executive officer jobs.
This will easily break the back bone of the union as each university will negotiate individual contract with different lecturers. University will also thrive to hire the best, the best don’t go on strike unless they don’t like their job.
The reason why we are scared of this steps is easy money from federal allocations. The fear that many universities can not make themselves attractive to decent student or good money. Those with private university are not wishing anything good for government universities.
When universities are financially independent it is more or less commercialized. This will bring students finance issues. Tuition fees will be beyond students from poor parents.
“I will suggest subsidy from government based on income of students parents or jobs. In this way, government will not need to give these universities any grant. For example, if university charge N400,000, government can offer to pay between 10 to 90% of the fee.”
Adewale Areago
Adewaleareag@outlook.com
