Ahead of tomorrow’s minimum wage negotiation committee meeting where a new offer is expected to be tabled by the Federal Government, Organised Labour has asked the government to get serious, describing the earlier proposed N48,000 as a huge joke. It also dismissed reports that labour is settling for N100,000 as the new offer from the government.
There are also expectations that the government will review its earlier N48,000 proposal upward when it resumes negotiations with labour and other stakeholders on the new national minimum wage, on Tuesday.
At the last meeting of the Tripartite Committee on National Minimum Wage, leaders of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) and Trade Union Congress (TUC) walked out after the Federal Government offered to pay N48,000 as the new minimum wage. The Organised Private Sector, on the other hand, proposed an initial offer of N54,000.
However, the chairman of the Tripartite Committee on the National Minimum Wage, 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.
After their earlier stance to boycott the committee meeting, the NLC Head of Information and Public Affairs, Benson Upah, said the organised labour would honour the invitation tomorrow but advised the government to be serious.
He said: “We expect that the government should be serious this time around. We expect them to take more seriously the issue of wages of workers.”
On whether labour would accept N100,000 as being insinuated, he said: “It will not be fair and these are the reasons. When we demanded N615,000, we broke that down. We used the barest minimum.
“For instance, we put accommodation for N40,000, we also used N500 for feeding, tell me where you are going to get food for N500 with a family of six. As I said, we used the barest estimate but beyond that, the government hiked electricity tariff by 250 per cent after we made our demand and that has introduced new costs and expenses. So, if the government is serious, it should not be thinking about N100,000.”
