TUC president, Festus Osifo
The organised labour is not fixated on ₦494,000 as the new national minimum wage for workers, but is pressing for something economically realistic in tandem with current inflationary pressures.
The President of the Trade Union Congress, Festus Osifo, made this known on Channels Television’s Politics Today programme on Tuesday.
Though the union leader refused to mention a specific amount, he said the new minimum wage must be equal in purchasing power to the value of ₦30,000 in 2019 and ₦18,000 in 2014.
Osifo said that labour would not accept any little addition to the ₦60,000 offered by the tripartite committee on the new minimum wage.
The organised labour comprising the TUC and the Nigeria Labour Congress, had suspended its industrial action for a week which started on Monday after reaching an agreement with the Federal Government.
The government promised that President Bola Tinubu is committed to a minimum wage more that the N60,000 earlier offered.
When asked whether labour would accept a few thousand naira additions to the offer, the TUC boss said, no.
“We also told them that it’s not that we’d get to the table and you start adding ₦1, ₦2, ₦3,000 as you were doing, and we got some good guarantees here and there that they would do something good.”
