In Nigeria, the Solidarity Center is helping unions band together to stamp out illegal anti-worker hiring practices, protect the rights of workers in Nigeria’s oil-rich Niger Delta, and apply new strategic research and organizing models.
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Because Nigeria is the most populous African nation, with an economy that relies highly on the volatile oil sector, economic events in Nigeria have a regional, continental, and global impact. Oil riches in Nigeria have not translated into wealth for workers, and their situation is insecure, with increased outsourcing and casualization of the workforce. Nigeria’s oil unions have advocated consistently for better living conditions throughout the country. Their pro-democracy activism during the era of military rule in Nigeria and their continued efforts for democratic and economic reform today have placed oil unions at the forefront of Nigeria’s democracy movement. The Solidarity Center works with Nigerian oil unions around internal union democracy, community relations, and workplace health and safety.
In 2007, the Nigeria Labor Congress elected new leaders, who inherited a changing and fractured labor movement. That election, combined with a change in Nigeria’s labor laws, created a need for the Solidarity Center to help implement a new comprehensive organizing model, based on the AFL-CIO’s Organizing Institute. Since NLC affiliates have begun using the new model, union membership has skyrocketed. In 2008, nearly 10,000 hotel and security workers joined unions.
U.S. Steelworkers, Nigerian Oil Workers: Partners in Health and Safety. In April 2008, as part of a Solidarity Center project, a group of trainers from the
United Steelworkers union (USW) traveled to Nigeria to conduct a week of occupational health and safety workshops for oil workers.
Nigerian Unions Address Gender Imbalances in the Fight Against HIV/AIDS. In Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, 5.6 percent of the adult population is infected with HIV. Social and cultural norms in Nigeria often deprive women workers of the education and power needed to ensure safe sex practices.
Breakthrough for Africa Telecom Workers. Leaders of four communications unions in Kenya, Nigeria, and South Africa signed a groundbreaking resolution to cooperate on common concerns in order to organize workers in multinational telecom companies across Africa.
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