The Tripartite Committee meeting on the new minimum wage will reconvene on Friday, May 31, 2024, as the Federal Government has extended an invitation to Organised Labour for the continuation of negotiations.
The letter which was signed by the Secretary of the Committee, Ekpo Nta, was sent to the Presidents of the two labour centres namely the Trade Union Congress (TUC) and the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC).
The scheduled meeting will be the seventh in the series of meetings by the committee, as members try to agree on what should be the new minimum wage.
The last meeting on Tuesday was deadlocked as the Organised Labour rejected the ₦60,000 offer by the Federal Government.
The labour representatives in the committee however adjusted their demands downward from the initial ₦497,000 naira minimum wage request to ₦494,000 naira
For months, labour unions and the Federal Government have been locked in negotiations over a new minimum wage with the former giving an ultimatum of May 31st.
Labour had initially demanded a ₦615,000 minimum wage but reduced it twice – now at ₦494,000. The government and the Organised Private Sector had initially proposed ₦48,000 and ₦54,000 which were also rejected by the labour.
During a meeting of the committee on minimum wage on Tuesday, labour rejected the Federal Government’s new minimum wage proposal of N60,000.
According to TUC leader, Festus Osifo, the new proposal does not tally with the nation’s economic realities. He said with Nigeria’s inflation rate of 33.69% as of April 2024 based on data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), labour had to “completely reject” the Federal Government’s latest offer of ₦60,000.
Credit: channelstv.com
