Minimum Wage: Labour Vows To Reject Little Addition To N60,000

The organised labour has vehemently pledged to reject any little addition to N60,000 previously proposed by the federal government as new minimum wage.

The labour’s leadership and the federal government’s team had, on Monday, reached an agreement on a new minimum wage that would be “above N60,000.”

But speaking last night on Channels Television’s Politics Today, the president of the Trade Union Congress (TUC), Festus Osifo, said the organised labour was not fixated on N494,000, but on a substantial amount.

When asked to mention the specific amount they would settle for, Osifo said the tripartite committee must show seriousness and offer workers something economically realistic in tandem with current inflationary pressures.

“No, we also told them that it is not that we would get to the table and you start adding N1, N2, N3,000 as you were doing and we got some good guarantees here and there that they would do something good,” he said.

He said the new minimum wage must be equal in purchasing power to the value of N30,000 in 2019 and N18,000 in 2014.

The organised labour had on Monday embarked on an indefinite strike over the government’s refusal to pay more than N60,000 as new minimum wage.

But the strike was “relaxed” yesterday for one week following the extraordinary National Executive Council (NEC) meeting of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) and TUC.