Charles Dickson
No bank worker, whether permanent or temporary, will be sacked due to the economic slump occasioned by the current coronavirus pandemic. The assurance came from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and the Bankers’ Committee after their meeting. This came amid earlier warning by the Federal Government to employers against sacking workers during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
The Committee’s decision followed a “special meeting,” which was taken to “help minimise and mitigate the negative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on families and livelihoods.” But Monday Ibru, as we fondly call, Haji Ibrahim, has already been sacked by one of the banks, and I know a handful that have got that their letters. I cannot begin to explain the trauma, the psychological devastation. In saner climes, like the United Kingdom, I gathered that British employers are laying off some 12,000 or thereabouts, but, trust me, there is nearly always a way to go about these things.
The COVID-19 pandemic is forcing some major adjustments to many aspects of our daily lives that will likely remain long after the crisis recedes: virtual learning, telework, and fewer hugs and handshakes, just to name a few. In addition, let’s hope the crisis also drives a permanent overhaul of the nation’s woefully inadequate worker safety net system. As the above scenario shows, in a nation where already millions are without a job, or out of earning, many more millions will be out of job.
In many states, for example, Nasarawa, my beloved Plateau, or Ekiti, the pandemic-induced recession has shredded non-existent programmes for workers’ economic security and career advancement. Systems that were not there, and those that have been long overdue for modernisation, having failed to provide security even before the pandemic, in an economy defined by technological disruptions, fast-evolving skill demands, and changing work regimens, have been tested and are falling woefully. Which way forward?
The lockdown has already deeply affected workers’ living pay cheque to pay cheque, relatively few of whom had a durable salary or can work from home. The safety net we’ve been living with for decades was never designed to support today’s workplace and employment patterns and needs, such as the gig economy and contract work, the tech world, we lived on the ‘oyel’ economy and safety net for some five decades, and now we can barely feed our nation for a week.
The nation’s antiquated safety net model was built following the discovery of black gold, shortly after the civil war, during a relatively brief period of Nigerian economic dominance facilitated by the oil boom, towards the point when the naira bought the dollar with arrogance, and postage stamps of the nation was currency in UK bars, and then came the Structural Adjustment Programme.
So, the reality of soon-scourging unemployment claims show that our labour market that was already weak is almost ready and certain to crumble in the COVID-19 pandemic at huge human and economic costs. The pandemic has exposed a weak point in the country’s economy: the precarity of low-wage workers. Many have adapted to unimaginable circumstances, risking their own wellbeing, implementing public health protocols, and keeping the essential bits of the economy, like access to food and health, running, but for how long?
A lack of labour market protections exacerbates these workers’ insecurity and leaves the whole system fragile. Up to a 100 million Nigerians, a double-digit per cent of the labour force, earn low wages. In the best of times, these workers cycle more frequently from one job to the next without wage advancement. This lack of job stability causes financial volatility for households even when the economy is growing.
Workers’ tenuous connection to the labour market is reflected not only in the low wages they earn, but in the safety net available to them. We find that workers who earn low wages and do not have employer-sponsored health care account for some crazy per cent or half of the country’s workforce. In a crisis, these workers are the least attached to their employer and thus the most likely to be laid off or have their hours reduced. And nearly 33 per cent of them work in the hospitality and retail sectors, the two sectors most immediately impacted by COVID-19-related layoffs.
Now, I am not an economist, but as the pandemic exposes the shortcomings of our workers’ safety net, we must use the crisis to accelerate necessary changes to federal and state workforce policies. The whole N30,000 minimum wage is now not just a sham, but a shame and scam. We need to address Nigeria’s economic security and career advancement programmes to adapt to occupational changes and new workplace realities. Help navigating changes in a labour market defined by constantly shifting skill demands, increasing AI and automation, and the disappearance of whole occupations in a flash, while others emerge just as quickly.
If we end up making these long-overdue changes to our economic security and career advancement programmes, our economy will be more stable and our workforce more agile and secure—and we will have succeeded in turning a crisis into an opportunity.
A robust economic recovery hinges on at least two policy agendas: expanding unemployment insurance to protect workers through this and future shocks, and efficiently facilitating their re-employment. If in doing so companies and policymakers also raise the skill equilibrium and make work less precarious, the country will emerge more resilient. But when will our policymakers, leaders, realise the reality of the last three paragraphs, will they ever? Only time will tell.
•Prince Dickson, PhD, is a
development and media
professional