Labour counters Tinubu over statement on minimum wage agreement

Organised Labour has rejected President Bola Tinubu’s claims that an agreement has been reached on new national minimum wages in his nationwide broadcast to make Democracy Day.

According to Organized Labour at the time negotiations ended on Friday, June 7, there was no agreement reached by the Tripartite Committee on the National Minimum Wage.

Rather, two figures such as N250,000 from Organised Labour and N62,000 from government and Organised Private Sector, OPS were arrived at and ought to have been submitted to the President.

In a statement by the Acting President of Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC, Prince Adewale Adeyanju, Labour noted that anything to the contrary was not only doctored but won’t be accepted by Labour.

President Tinubu had during his national broadcast on June 12 democracy day said an executive bill on the new minimum wage will soon be sent to the national assembly.

Tinubu said the federal government has negotiated with organised labour “in good faith and with open arms” on a new national minimum wage.

“We shall soon send an executive bill to the national assembly to enshrine what has been agreed upon as part of our law for the next five years or less,” he said.

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“In the face of labour’s call for a national strike, we did not seek to oppress or crack down on the workers as a dictatorial government would have done. We chose the path of cooperation over conflict.

“No one was arrested or threatened. Instead, the labour leadership was invited to break bread and negotiate toward a good-faith resolution.

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At the last meeting of the tripartite committee on minimum wage, organised labour had rejected the N62,000 proposal by the government and insisted on ₦250,000 as the living wage for an average Nigerian worker.

Chris Onyeka, assistant general secretary of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), had said the unions “never contemplated ₦100,000 let alone of ₦62,000”.

“We are still at ₦250,000; that is where we are, and that is what we considered enough concession to the government and the other social partners in this particular situation,” he said.

“We are not just driven by frivolities but also by the realities of the marketplace—the realities of things we buy every day: bags of rice, yam, garri, and all of that.”