Minimum Wage: Labour Vows To Reject Little Addition on N60,000

The organised labour vowed to reject any little addition to the N60,000 offer by the tripartite committee on the new minimum wage.

The President of the Trade Union Congress, Festus Osifo, made this known on Channels Television’s Politics Today programme on Tuesday.

When asked whether labour would accept a few thousand naira additions to the offer, the TUC boss said, “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.

Though the union leader refused to mention a specific amount, he said the new minimum wage must be equal in purchasing power to the value of N30,000 in 2019 and N18,000 in 2014.

Meanwhile, President Bola Tinubu has directed Minister of Finance, Wale Edun to provide detailed analysis of the financial implications of new minimum wage.

The Minister of Information and National Orientation, Mohammed Idris, said Tinubu during the meeting directed Edun to provide the financial implications of the new minimum wage in 48 hours.

“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.” Idris explained.