THE REASONS ORGANIZED LABOR IS NOT WILLING TO ACCEPT ₦100,000 AS MINIMUM WAGE

Babatunji Wusu –

The Federal Government’s offer of ₦100,000 as the new minimum wage would be rejected, according to Organized Labour, as it can afford to pay more.

It further demanded that the government take worker wage talks seriously and stick to its original methodology of using the lowest possible minimum to determine the new minimum pay of N615,000.

This was revealed in an interview conducted over the weekend by Benson Upah, the NLC’s head of information and public affairs.

Remember that last Wednesday, when the government proposed N48,000 as the new minimum wage, Organised Labour—which is composed of the Trade Union Congress of Nigeria (TUC) and the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC)—withdrew from the negotiation conference.

He said: “Our expectations are that government should be serious this time around. We expect them to take more seriously the issue of wages of workers.”

On whether labour will accept N100,000 as insinuated in some qusrters, he said: “Well, it will not be fair and these are the reasons. The first reason is that when we demanded N615,000, we broke that down. In fact, we used the barest minimum.

“For instance, we put accommodation at N40,000, we also use for feeding N500, tell me where you are going to get food for N500 with a family of six. As I said, we used barest estimates but beyond that, government hiked electricity tariff by two hundred and fifty per cent after we made our demand and that has introduced costs and expenses.

‘’So if the government is serious, it should not be thinking about one hundred thousand naira. You know that when you create poor citizens, you create a poorer country.”