Reports suggest that organized labor has revised its initial request for a new national minimum wage of ₦494,000.
There is a possibility that they will now consider accepting ₦100,000 as the Tripartite Committee on National Minimum Wage begins daily meetings over five days to come to an agreement.
President Bola Tinubu instructed Minister of Finance, Wale Edun, to provide the cost implications of the new minimum wage within 48 hours.
According to various sources, union leaders are open to lowering their initial demand from ₦494,000 to ₦100,000 due to criticism and controversy surrounding the previous proposal.
A senior official from the NLC confirmed that while the final offer had not been formally presented to the tripartite committee, they are firm on advocating for a minimum wage of ₦100,000.
He stated, “Today’s (Tuesday) meeting was essentially to set an agenda and plan how to complete the assignment within the five days.
“The government representatives did not mention a raise in the N60, 000. They just set the agenda on what to do and how to go about the negotiation. There was no mention of any increment. But labour planned to close the negotiation on N100,000 minimum wage.’’
Prof. Theophilus Ndubuaku, Deputy Head of NLC Political Commission, also verified that the tripartite meeting on minimum wage scheduled for Tuesday aimed to set the agenda for the daily meetings.
“We met today (Tuesday) to draw up an agenda for the one-week daily meeting. We met today and drew the agenda because the agreement was that we meet daily for the meet one week and on our own, we said we are relaxing the strike not even suspending it.
“It’s more like putting everybody on red alert. It means we are not going to give any notice. Which means by this time next week, we are going on strike. There is a difference between relax and suspend. Relax is to stay on your duty post and put your hands on the trigger. It is tomorrow (today) that we are expecting the government to submit another proposal,’’ he explained.
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