Minimum wage: FG, Organised Labour to meet today
…As NLC tells committee to perish offer below N615,000
The Federal Government and the Organised Labour have been scheduled to meet today to resume negotiations on the new minimum wage.
Recall that the Organised Labour comprising the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) and the Trade Union Congress of Nigeria (TUC) pulled out of the negotiation meeting last week Wednesday when the government offered N48,000 as the new minimum wage.
However, Chairman of the Tripartite Committee on the National Minimum wage, Alhaji Bukar Goni in a letter to the organised labour for a meeting tomorrow indicated interest that the government will shift ground and asked the organised labour to also shift ground.
The letter appealed to the labour leaders to speak to their members and attend the reconvened meeting next Tuesday.
The organised labour comprising the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) and the Trade Union Congress (TUC) have proposed a new minimum wage of N615,000, which is way higher than the N48,000 proposal by the government.
The organised private sector, on the other hand, proposed an initial offer of N54,000. After dumping the talks, the labour leaders addressed a press conference where they expressed their anger over the Federal Government’s offer.
They blamed the government and the private sector for the breakdown in negotiation.
The Federal Government had failed to present a nationally acceptable minimum wage to Nigerians before the May 1 Labour Day.
The situation has forced labour to be at loggerheads with the government. In the wake of the tussle, the NLC President Joe Ajaero insisted on the N615,000 minimum wage, arguing that the amount was arrived at after an analysis of the economic situation worsened by the hike in the cost of living and the needs of an average Nigerian family of six.
Ajaero and labour leaders have given the Federal Government a May 31 deadline to meet their demands.
Reacting, the Nigeria Labour Congress has told the committee to perish making an offer below N615,000.
Defending the proposed wage, the NLC Head of Information and Public Affairs, Benson Upah, said, “Well, it will not be fair and these are the reasons. The first reason is that when we demanded for N615,000, we broke that down. In fact, we used the barest minimum.”
“For instance we put accommodation for N40,000, we also use for feeding N500, tell me where you are going to get food for N500 with a family of six. As I said, we used barest estimate but beyond that, government hiked electricity tariff by two hundred and fifty percent after we made our demand and that has introduced new cost and expenses. So if government is serious, it should not be thinking about a hundred thousand naira.”
The NLC spokesman further added that the NLC will honour the invitation but he advised the government to be serious.
He said, “Our expectations are that the government should be serious this time around. We expect them to take more seriously the issue of wages of workers.”
On January 30, Vice President Kashim Shettima inaugurated the 37-member tripartite committee to come up with a new minimum wage.
With its membership cutting across federal, and state governments, the private sector, and organised labour, the panel is to recommend a new national minimum wage for the country.
During the committee’s inauguration, the Vice President urged the members to “speedily” arrive at a resolution and submit their reports early.
“This timely submission is crucial to ensure the emergence of a new minimum wage,” Shettima said.
The 37-man committee is chaired by the former Head of the Civil Service of the Federation, Goni Aji.
