President of the Trade Union Congress of Nigeria (TUC), Comrade Festus Osifo, has said that the much-awaited new minimum wage may not be announced on Workers’ Day, May 1st.
Osifo said this in Abuja when he responded to questions from journalists, after TUC’s National Executive Council meeting.
He said that Tripartite Committee negotiation is still ongoing and that the TUC and Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) have harmonised their preferred new minimum wage figure, pegging it at N615,000
In his words, “If you remember, the TUC earlier submitted about N447,000, but we have harmonised with the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC).
“It is now N615,000, and regarding the timeline, for the new minimum wage, the committee is still working.
“So, certainly, May 1, will not work for the pronouncement of the new minimum wage.
“This is except the Federal Government wants to pay the minimum wage of N500,000 to workers,” he said.
He said that the pronouncement by the government would be impossible as the committee was still working and was yet to reach an agreement.
Furthermore, he explained that the N615,000 demanded new minimum wage is not the most important demand of both labour centres because they already have a Chater of Demand that contains the most important demands of Nigerian workers.
“The government also has their barest minimum and markup and so conversations and negotiations would start and end somewhere, ‘he said.
He also noted that before organised labour arrived at that amount a proper study was conducted.
He added that if you look at the N615. 000, you would think that the amount is right but at about the time we did that computation dollar was about N1, 700.
“But when you divide it, you see that dollar was about less than 400 dollars per month but we have countries in Africa that are doing much more than that,” he said.
“I also want to say that we have collated all our reports today and we are streamlining it and some subcommittees in the Tripartite Committee are still working.
“So, it is just for us to fast-track those work so that we can conclude soonest and we were supposed to have a meeting this week but it was called off,” he said.
He said hopeful that the committee would likely meet after May Day.
He also noted that this depends on whether committees have finished and have tuned in their report.
