What unions actually want and what employers can credibly offer

Sit in on enough Nigerian union negotiations and you start to notice something. The income security conversation comes up in almost every session. Job loss protection. What happens to members if there is a restructuring. How the organisation will support people through a transition.

Employers listen carefully, make notes, and then offer roughly the same thing they offered last time: statutory minimum severance, some reassurances about process, and a hope that it does not come up again for a while.

It always comes up again.

What unions are actually asking for

Strip away the negotiating language and the core ask is straightforward: if a member loses their job through no fault of their own, what protection do they have? Not what the law minimally requires. What will the employer actually do?

This is not an unreasonable ask. It is the same question any professional would ask. The challenge is that most Nigerian employers have no credible structured answer to give.

"We have been having this same negotiation for eleven years. The ask does not change. The response does not change. We go back and forth and eventually settle on language that satisfies no one."

Why verbal assurances do not hold

The most common employer response to income security demands is some version of "we will take care of our people." Sometimes this is genuine. But it is not a policy. It is not insured. It is not binding. And when a restructuring happens — as they eventually do — those words carry no weight.

Union members have seen this enough times to know the difference between a promise and a structure. A structure is something with paperwork, with an insurer behind it, with a process for making a claim. A promise is what gets said in a negotiation room.

What a credible offer actually looks like

For the first time, Nigerian employers have a structured, insurer-backed answer to bring to the table. Not a promise. Not a discretionary fund. A group income protection policy, underwritten by a NAICOM-licensed insurer, with defined benefit levels, defined eligibility, and a claims process that operates independently of the employer's goodwill.

This changes the conversation completely. It is the difference between "we will take care of you" and "here is the policy document, here is the insurer, here is what you are entitled to and how to claim it."

The negotiating advantage for employers who move first

Employers who bring income protection to the table before being asked for it do something remarkable in Nigerian labour relations: they shift the dynamic from adversarial to collaborative. They demonstrate that they understand what their workforce actually needs, and they are offering a real solution rather than a holding position.

In our experience, organisations that proactively offer structured income protection find their union relationships qualitatively different. Not because the unions become complacent, but because the most contentious recurring demand has been genuinely addressed.