The Organised Labour has revealed that it is not making noise in the media over the new minimum wage because of the ongoing consultation with other stakeholders as directed by President Bola Tinubu.
President, Trade Union Congress, Festus Osifo, who revealed this said the Labour Centre is still maintaining its stance that the N250,000 benchmark remains the ideal minimum wage for workers in Nigeria.
The agitation over the minimum wage appears to have slowed down after the President asked for further engagement with stakeholders before the bill would be sent to the National Assembly.
The Federal Government and Organised Private Sector have agreed on N62,000 as the new minimum wage, but labour is insisting on N250, 000.
Osifo said negotiations on the new minimum wage has not been abandoned, rather labour and the government were fine-tuning the matter.
“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,” the TUC president stated.
He insisted that the minimum wage was receiving attention, adding that the President wanted further 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 some level of reach-out and conversations.
“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,” Osifo stated.