Labour, FG fine-tune talks on minimum wage
President of the Trade Union Congress (TUC) Festus Osifo said labour and the Federal Government were in talks before the bill on a new national minimum wage was forwarded to the National Assembly by President Bola Tinubu.
Osifo confirmed that labour has had meetings with the Minister of State for Labour and Employment, Secretary to the Government of the Federation and other government officials to ensure that the new minimum wage would “cater to the needs of the poorest of the poor.”
He spoke at the Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria (PENGASSAN) Women Commission maiden Annual Convention in Abuja on Tuesday with the theme: “The Dynamic Woman: Navigating Challenges in a Constantly Evolving World.”
Talks on a new national minimum wage has stalled following the decision of President Tinubu to consult with stakeholders before send the bill to the NASS.
While the Federal Government and Organised Private Sector (OPS) agreed on N62, 000 as the new minimum wage, labour insisted on N250, 000.
Osifo said some level of “internal work” was ongoing before the bill would be submitted in “earnest.”
He stated: “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.
“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 reachout and conversations.
“We still insist on the N250,000 benchmark as idea minimum wage.”
Osifo also said the country would continue to experience fuel scarcity until some logistics problems are addressed.
