Organized labour has agreed to participate in the Tripartite Committee’s minimum wage negotiation meeting on Tuesday. Trade Union Congress (TUC) Vice President Etim Okon confirmed this in an interview on Monday in Abuja.
The Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) and the TUC previously walked out of an April negotiation meeting after the federal government proposed a new minimum wage of N48,000. The unions are demanding N615,000, a 2,000 percent increase from the current N30,000 minimum wage.
“The proposal falls significantly short of meeting our needs and aspirations,” stated the unions. The NLC criticized the government for not providing verified data to support its offer, accusing it of undermining the bargaining process’s credibility.
“The federal government has apologized, and the next meeting is scheduled for Tuesday. We will attend and present our demand,” Okon said. “We will still be presenting the N615,000 as before. Our submission was not rejected; we only rejected the government’s N48,000 proposal because they did not show us how they arrived at that amount.”