The Head of Public Affairs of the Nigeria Labour Congress, Benson Upah, stated that the NLC would insist on its N250,000 proposal during the meeting with President Bola Tinubu, which is scheduled to take place at the State House in Abuja on Thursday (today).
Despite the fact that the cost of living has subsequently increased, we are still going to the table demanding N250,000. We have acted in a very patriotic and reasonable manner,” Upah said our correspondent. In keeping with Tinubu’s pledge to have additional stakeholder consultations on the minimum wage, labor representatives were invited to a meeting with the president.
The President stated in his Democracy Day speech on June 12, 2024, that an executive bill on the new national minimum wage will shortly be sent to the National Assembly for passage. This meeting is being planned around a month after that announcement.
The President-chaired Federal Executive Council decided to halt its deliberations on the new minimum wage memo on June 25 in order to give stakeholders more time to comment before the executive law was eventually drafted. Following receipt of the Tripartite Committee on Minimum Wage report from George Akume, Secretary to the Government of the Federation, the President made his decision.
Based on comments from the federal, state, and organized private sectors, the report that Akume received from Bukar Goni Aji, the Chairman of the Tripartite Committee, suggested a minimum salary of N62,000. After negotiations, Labor requested N250,000, but the state governors expressed concern that they might not have the money to pay N62,000.
The labor unions cited the current food inflation brought on by the twin objectives of eliminating gasoline subsidies and unifying the FX windows to argue that the present N30,000 minimum salary was no longer feasible.
At the 141st meeting of the National Economic Council, Tinubu and Vice President Kassim Shettima convened with governors and ministries to discuss the new minimum wage for workers, two days following the FEC meeting. But the conclusion of their encounter remained a secret.
The minimum wage negotiations had been going on for a while, and there had been little progress in reaching an agreement between government officials, organized labor, and the business sector. On June 3, the labor unions, furious, declared an indefinite strike that severely disrupted government and business operations across the country.
The National Assembly, state assembly buildings, banks, hospitals, airports, the national grid, and banks were all closed by the unions. But after the labor leaders met with senior government officials and received indications that the administration was prepared to raise its offer, the industrial action was put on hold.
The Minimum pay Act of 2019 expires in April 2024, and President Bola Tinubu established a tripartite committee in January to negotiate a new minimum pay for workers. The committee is made up of officials from the OPS, the federal and state governments, and organized labor.
