The President of the Trade Union Congress, Festus Osifo has said that the N250,000 benchmark remains the ideal minimum wage for workers in Nigeria.
Osifo further stated that the TUC and the Nigeria Labour Congress were meeting with federal government officials to establish a minimum wage agreement, according to The PUNCH.
This disclosure was made by Osifo at the Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria Women Commission maiden Annual Convention in Abuja, with the theme, ‘The Dynamic Woman: Navigating Challenges in a Constantly Evolving World.’
Discussions on a new national minimum wage have halted following President Bola Tinubu’s decision to engage with stakeholders before submitting the bill to the National Assembly.
The Federal Government and the Organized Private Sector had agreed on N62,000 as the new minimum wage, but labour insists on N250,000.
Commenting, Osifo said negotiations on the new minimum wage has not been abandoned, rather labour and the government were fine-tuning the matter.
He said “The minimum wage negotiations cannot be dead. The 2019 minimum wage (that has expired) took about two years to see the light of day. We started the negotiations in 2017.
“We promised you when we started in January (this year) that we will ensure this one is fast – tracked for us not to be in the conundrum that we were in 2019 which took two years.”
He emphasized that the minimum wage was being addressed, and that the President wanted additional consultations before submitting it to the National Assembly.
“So where we are today, we submitted the divergent position in June, when we did that you know clearly that Mr President came out to say that he wanted to consult across board which is the governors, Local Government chairmen, organised private sector and labour, so we are doing so.
“So that what will be submitted to the National Assembly will actually be a minimum wage that will cater for the poorest of the poor, so for the fact that in the media we are not shouting, we are doing some level of internal work so that this bill will be submitted in earnest soon. We still insist on the N250,000 benchmark as ideal minimum wage,” the TUC president stated.
