Organized labour, has again on Tuesday rejected the Federal Government new minimum wage offer.
Gatekeepers News reports that the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) and the Trade Union Congress (TUC) rejected the Federal Government’s offer of N60,000 as the new minimum wage for workers.
The Organised Labour also shifted ground from its ₦497,000 stance last week to ₦494,000.
According to a key member of the Tripartite Committee responsible for negotiating a new minimum wage for Nigerian workers, the Federal Government and the Organised Private Sector (OPS) side of the talks proposed a ₦60,000 monthly minimum wage on Tuesday (today) as against the ₦57,000 they proposed during the committee’s last meeting held last week.
During last week’s meeting, the. government and the Organised Private Sector (OPS) initially proposed ₦48,000 and later changed it to N54,000 last week, which was also rejected by the organized labour.
The organized labour had also presented ₦615,000 as the new minimum wage but saw reasons to drop their demand to ₦497,000 last week and then increased it to ₦494,000 on Tuesday.
However, today’s meeting ended in a statement, without any agreement on a new minimum wage.
The Tripartite Committee is yet to reach an agreement just about three days before the May 31 deadline the labour unions gave to the government to conclude the negotiations.
The labour unions said the current minimum wage of ₦30,000 is no longer sufficient to cater to the well-being of an average Nigerian worker and lamented that not all governors are paying the current wage award which expired in April 2024.
The Minimum Wage Act of 2019, signed by former President Muhammadu Buhari states that the wage should be reviewed every five years to meet up with contemporary economic demands of workers.
The president of NLC, Joe Ajaero described the fresh proposals by the government as insubstantial.
He said, “It is still not substantial compared to what we need to make a family moving.”
“The economy of the workers is totally destroyed. In fact, the workers don’t have any economy. I think there are two economies in the country; the economy of the bourgeoisie and the economy of the workers. I think we have to harmonise this so that we can have a meeting point.”
