The Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) and the Trade Union Congress (TUC), on Monday, reacted to the Federal Government’s (FG) disposition to the minimum wage negotiations.
According to the Organised Labour, FG’s reaction indicates an intent to pauperise Nigerians.
On Monday, NLC and TUC started an indefinite strike over the Federal Government’s refusal to increase the minimum wage from N60,000.
They had initially proposed a national minimum wage of N615,000, which was later reduced to N494,000.
Reacting in a statement, the unions said the Federal Government failed to reciprocate its gesture and rather “made small jumps counter-offer.”
The counter-offer, they said, “mocks the excruciating hardship brought on workers by the government’s insensitive and oppressive economic policies.”
They said the federal government also demonstrated contempt for the negotiation process by withdrawing its core negotiating representatives.
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The Organised Labour said that while the remunerations of public office holders in Nigeria are above the wages of their contemporaries outside the country, “Nigerian workers are regaled with tales of the government’s inability to pay decent and living wages to workers who are the ones who produce the wealth that they squander.”
The statement continued that, “The current disposition of the Federal Government to the national minimum wage negotiation smacks of a class war indicative of the intents of a privileged few to wilfully pauperize and enslave the mass of our people.
“This attitude is further exemplified by the failure of the Federal Government to diligently implement the so-called wage award it promised workers as a palliative to the petrol price hike.
“The payments that were made spasmodically have totally dried up since this February.
“Nigerian workers have had enough of the government’s drive to institutionalise a slave caste system.
“Nigeria’s independence, which was largely procured on the sweat and blood of Nigerian workers, guarantees equality for all citizens, including workers.
“We will resist any attempt to use slave wages as an instrument of mass pauperisation.
“We will continue to resist socio-economic policies cooked in the kitchen of neo-liberalism and neo-colonialism.
“We will resist the conspiracy of a looting ruling class to give us an identity that impugns the ideals of our founders and satirises the words in the new national anthem.”
