According to Trade Union Congress President Festus Osifo, organized labor still maintains that the N250,000 benchmark is the best minimum pay for workers in Nigeria. This was stated on Tuesday.
Osifo added that in an effort to agree on a minimum wage, representatives from the Nigeria Labour Congress and TUC were meeting with federal government representatives.
Speaking at the inaugural annual convention of the Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria Women Commission in Abuja under the topic “The Dynamic Woman: Navigating Challenges in a Constantly Evolving World,” he revealed this.
After President Bola Tinubu decided to confer with interested parties before submitting the bill to the National Assembly, the conversation about a new national minimum wage has come to a standstill.
The Federal Government and organized Private Sector have agreed on N62,000 as the new minimum wage, but labour is insisting on N250, 000. Speaking at the event, Osifo said negotiations on the new minimum wage have not been abandoned; rather, labor and the government are fine-tuning the matter.
“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 (this year) that we will ensure this one is fast-tracked for us not to be in the conundrum that we were in 2019, which took two years,” the TUC president stated.
He insisted that the minimum wage was receiving attention, adding that the President wanted further consultations before submitting it to the National Assembly.
“So where we are today, we submitted the divergent position in June, When we did that, you know clearly that Mr President came out to say that he wanted to consult across board, which is the governors, Local Government chairmen, organised private sector and labour, so we are doing some level of reach-out and conversations.
“So that what will be submitted to the National Assembly will actually be a minimum wage that will cater for the poorest of the poor, so for the fact that in the media we are not shouting, we are doing some level of internal work so that this bill will be submitted in earnest soon. We still insist on the N250,000 benchmark as ideal minimum wage,” Osifo stated.
