Organised labour may settle for N100,000 minimum wage as the Tripartite Committee on National Minimum Wage commences daily meetings for five days to reach a consensus.
Multiple sources in the labour movement told The PUNCH on Tuesday that the union leaders were willing to review their demand from N494,000 to N100,000, following the criticism and controversy that trailed their proposal which was considered outrageous and unrealistic.
In a statement by his media aide, Rabiu Ibrahim on Saturday, the Minister of Information and National Orientation, Alhaji Mohammed Idris, said the proposed minimum wage would result in an annual expenditure of N9.5 trillion, a burden he described as untenable for the nation’s finances.
Despite the intervention of the leadership of the National Assembly, labour embarked on an indefinite strike on Monday, a development that grounded economic activities nationwide.
Banks, airports, public schools and courts were shut, forcing the Federal Government to convene an emergency meeting to find a way out of the impasse.
In a bid to move the negotiation forward, the unions on Tuesday announced the suspension of the industrial action for five days after President Bola Tinubu agreed to pay a national minimum wage higher than N60,000 and the tripartite committee pledged its readiness to convene daily until a new minimum wage is announced.
To show his commitment to the negotiation, the President on Tuesday directed the Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Chief Wale Edun, to present the cost implications for a new minimum wage within two days.
The President gave the order at a meeting with the government negotiation team led by the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Senator George Akume, at the Presidential Villa in Abuja.
A senior NLC official said to The PUNCH that the unions would insist on N100,000 minimum wage.
He said: “Today’s (Tuesday) meeting was essentially to set an agenda and plan how to complete the assignment within the five days.
“The government representatives did not mention a raise in the N60, 000. They just set the agenda on what to do and how to go about the negotiation. There was no mention of any increment. But labour planned to close the negotiation on N100,000 minimum wage”.
The Deputy Head of NLC Political Commission, Prof. Theophilus Ndubuaku, also said that the Tuesday tripartite meeting on minimum wage was to draw an agenda for the daily meetings.
“We met today (Tuesday) to draw up an agenda for the one-week daily meeting. We met today and drew the agenda because the agreement was that we meet daily for the meet one week and on our own, we said we are relaxing the strike not even suspending it.
“It’s more like putting everybody on red alert. It means we are not going to give any notice. Which means by this time next week, we are going on strike. There is a difference between relax and suspend. Relax is to stay on your duty post and put your hands on the trigger. It is tomorrow (today) that we are expecting the government to submit another proposal”.
The organised labour vowed to reject any little addition to the N60,000 offer by the tripartite committee on the new minimum wage, according to the President of the Trade Union Congress (TUC), Comrade Festus Osifo, while featuring on Channels Television’s Politics Today programme on Tuesday.
On whether labour would accept a few thousand Naira additions to the offer, the TUC boss responded: “No, we also told them that it’s not that we’d get to the table and you start adding N1, N2, N3,000 as you were doing and we got some good guarantees here and there that they would do something good”.
Osifo added that labour was not fixated on N494,000 as the new minimum wage for workers in the country but the tripartite committee must show seriousness and offer workers something economically realistic in tandem with current inflationary pressures.
But disclosing the presidential directive to the Finance Minister, Idris said that President Tinubu during the meeting directed Edun to provide the financial implications of the new minimum wage in 48 hours.
He said: “The President has just summoned a meeting of all those who negotiated on behalf of the Federal Government led by the Secretary to the Government of the Federation. The minister of finance was there, the minister of budget planning, the minister of information, the minister of budget and national planning, the minister of labour, and the NNPCL GMD.
“We were all there to look at all issues and the President has directed the minister of finance to do the numbers and get back to him between today and tomorrow so that we can have figures ready for negotiation with labour”.
