Government dismisses strike threats by labour federations

Niger’s government has warned trade unions that while it advocates social dialogue it does not intend to bow to unjustified pressure. The warning came as two of the country’s four labour federations threatened to call strikes to press wage-related demands. "We have the impression that, in Niger, the trade unions’ logic is geared towards putting a spoke in the state’ wheel," Minister of Public Service and Labour Moussa Seybou Kassey said on Thursday on national television. Social dialogue is "perverted", he added, because it “is interpreted as a right to force the government to jeopardise programmes that have made it possible to reinvigorate workers’ households.” His statements followed a strike call by the Confédération nigérienne du travail (CNT - Niger Labour Confederation) and a threat by the Confédération démocratique des travailleurs du Niger (CDTN - Democratic confederation of Workers of Niger) to call out its affiliates. The CNT had called on bank, commercial and airport workers to strike from 28 to 31 August to protest against what it described as an excessively high income tax rate. These workers went on a CNT-organised strike on 15 and 16 August for the same reason. Kassey said the CNT’s demand for a lower income tax would deprive the government of five billion CFA francs (almost US $7.4 million) in 2002, which the state did not intend to forego when labour was not proposing any alternatives. The CDTN - one of Niger’s main public sector federations - threatened to go on strike because, it said, the government had been delaying an operation under which state workers receive house lots as compensation for unpaid wages. The CNDT also accused the government of dragging its feet on the creation of an autonomous pension fund. Kassey described the CDTN’s stand as unfair and unjustified. "We have already allocated the house lots and we’ll continue to do so, but everyone knows it’s a process and I do not see how that deserves an ultimatum because the operation that has been initiated is evidently in the interest of both government and workers," he said. The government had inherited a debt of 45 billion CFA francs (US $66.5 million) to Niger’s 40,000 state workers for one year’s unpaid salaries. It had paid up 19 billion CFA francs (about US $28 million) up to February through the compensatory mechanism. The government has been reeling under 295 billion CFA francs (almost US $436 million) in arrears on its domestic payments, much of it inherited from the previous administration.