Minimum Wage: Tinubu’s Ministers, Governors Abandon Negotiation

… Labour Declared Strike

Members of the organised labour has declared a nationwide indefinite strike as Ministers and Governors abandoned ongoing new minimum wage negotiation.

The President of the Nigeria Labour Congress, Joe Ajaero, disclosed this at a press conference in the Labour House, Abuja on Friday

Ajaero said the Federal Government  refused to raise the proposed minimum wage from N60,000.

He said the strike would begin by midnight on Sunday, June 2, 2024.

The NLC leader, who read from a jointly prepared speech alongside his Trade Union Congress counterpart, Festus Osifo, expressed what it described as, “grave concern and disappointment” over the Federal Government’s failure to conclude and pass into law a new National Minimum Wage Act and reverse the hike in electricity tariff to N65/kWh.

Ajaero noted that the Friday meeting between the government and labour further demonstrated the unseriousness and apparent contempt with which the Nigerian state holds the demands of Nigerian workers and people.

“No governor was present and ministers absent except the Minister of State for Labour and Employment who doubles as a conciliator. There was none present on the side of the government with the appropriate authority to commit them to any outcome; in essence, the government abandoned the meeting. We consider this disdainful and shows a lack of commitment to a successful National Minimum Wage negotiation exercise,” he said.

Ajaero noted that during the last May Day celebration on May 1, 2024, organised labour issued an ultimatum to the Federal Government, demanding the conclusion of the minimum wage negotiation by the end of the month.