President Bola Ahmed Tinubu will today, meet the organised labour which comprises Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) and Trade Union Congress of Nigeria (TUC).
Gatekeepers News reports that the meeting is aimed at further consultations before a bill on a new national minimum wage will be sent to the National Assembly.
TUC President Comrade Festus Osifo confirmed this to reporters on Wednesday.
He said, “The president has invited the organised labour (NLC, TUC) for consultation tomorrow (today), he said in a short text message.”
The Labour leader had on Tuesday, told reporters at the Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria (PENGASSAN) Women Commission’s maiden Annual Convention in Abuja that labour is optimistic that a better deal will be achieved.
Osifo said Labour expects that “what will be submitted to the National Assembly will actually be a minimum wage that will cater for the poorest of the poor”.
Before this, progress on a new national minimum wage was stalled after President Tinubu requested that he consult with stakeholders before sending the bill for enactment.
Tinubu, during his June 12 broadcast, said an executive bill would be sent to the National Assembly to formalise the new minimum wage agreement.
This comes after the conclusion of negotiations by the Tripartite Committee and the submission of report on June 10.
Recall that there was no resolution because the government and Organised Private Sector agreed on N62,000, while labour demanded N250,000.
Osifo noted that some level of internal work was ongoing before the bill would be submitted in earnest.
He added, “The minimum wage negotiations cannot be dead. The 2019 minimum wage (that has expired) took about two years to see the light of day. We started the negotiations in 2017. We promised you when we started in January that we would ensure this one is fast-tracked to avoid the conundrum of 2019 which took two years.”
