Minimum Wage: Organised Labour commences mobilisation over delay

Alarmed by persistent government’s efforts to derail the implementation of a new National Minimum Wage, organized labour has commenced mobilisation of its members nationwide to prepare them for the next line of action.

Operating under the aegis of the Trade Union Side (TUS) of the Joint National Public Service Negotiating Council (JNPSNC), the eight (8) Unions in the Public Services of the Federal and 36 State Governments have alerted Nigerians that labour may have to embark on industrial action if the current state of affairs as regards the issue of consequential adjustment arising from the new national Minimum wage of N30,000.00 per month remains the same.

In a press statement issued in Abuja on Monday, the TUS Acting Chairman, Comrade Anchaver Simon, and the Secretary, Comrade Alade Bashir Lawal, regretted that since the Committee set up early this month by the government to work out the Consequential Adjustments arising from the new National Minimum Wage of N30,000.00 started to meet, the government has been coming up with one strange proposal or the other all with the intent of scuttling the implementation of the new National Minimum Wage signed into law by President Muhammadu Buhari on Thursday, 18th April, 2019.

The Union said: “As things are right now, the government side is only prepared to pay peanuts to workers as adjustment under the pretext that it will soon be undertaking general salary review in the Public Service.

“It will be recalled that the Committee on Consequential Adjustment of salary agreed to set up a technical body to work out different scenarios in respect of salaries that would be paid to workers who are in the Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) that draw their emoluments from the Government treasury.