Storms out of meeting
The Organised Labour yesterday stormed out of the minimum wage committee meeting with the Federal Government over the latters offer of N48,000 new wage.
Recall that the Organised Labour had made a demand of N615,000 as the new minimum wage and had given the Government up till May 31 to conclude negotiations on new living wage. The Federal Government and the Organised Private Sector are however offering N48, 000 and N54, 000 respectively as new minimum wage.
The Tripartite Committee on New National Minimum Wage resumed negotiations yesterday.
It was gathered that representatives of the Organised Labour, comprising the Nigeria Labour Congress, (NLC) and the Trade Union Congress of Nigeria, (TUC), were enraged over the Government offer.
According to Professor Theophilus Ndubuaku, who is one of the representatives of the NLC, we asked whether the N45,000 is for transport, food, clothing, housing or for what. So, we just told them that since they are not serious, we better just leave, so we stormed out of the place.
He said that the Government offer was presented to them by the Permanent Secretary, Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF) Office.
According to sources in the meeting, while Government did not provide any data to back-up its proposal unlike Organised Labour, OPS on the other hand, said none of its members pays less than N78,000.
Recall that the NLC had proposed N615, 000 as the new minimum wage, on the grounds that the amount a worker in Nigeria should earn in order to be able to keep up with the galloping inflation and weather the cost of living storm.
In its breakdown of the proposed minimum wage last week, food was put at N9,000 a day multiplied by 30 days (month) which equals N270,000.
Also, NLC pegged N110,000 for transportation per month; while housing/accommodation was N40,000 a month.
