The organised labour has vowed to reject any little addition to the ₦60,000 the Federal Government proposed as the new minimum wage.
The leadership of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) and the Trade Union Congress (TUC) during their negotiation meeting on Monday, June 3, 2024, reached an agreement that the minimum wage would be above ₦60,000.
In their previous meetings, the union leaders had demanded and insisted that the minimum wage be increased from ₦30,000 to ₦494,000 for workers.
However, after an emergency meeting called by the Secretary General of the Federation, George Akume, the labour unions on Tuesday, June 4, suspended their nationwide strike for five days.
Speaking on Channels Television’s Politics Today on Tuesday evening, Festus Osifo, the president of the TUC, said organised labour is not bent on ₦494,000 as minimum wage.
Although the labour unions agreed that the government’s offer should be above ₦60,000, Osifo said the unions would reject the offer if an insubstantial amount is added to the ₦60,000.
He said, “No, we also told them that it is not that we would get to the table and you start adding ₦1, ₦2, ₦3,000 as you were doing and we got some good guarantees here and there that they would do something good.”
He added that the new minimum wage must be equal in purchasing power to the value of ₦30,000 in 2019 and ₦18,000 in 2014.