The tripartite minimum wage negotiation meeting involving Organised Labour, the federal and state governments, and the Organized Private Sector, OPS has again ended in deadlock, following Labour’s rejection of the government’s N54,000 offer which it described as wage reduction for workers who are already earning N77,000 on payroll of the federal government
The organized labour had earlier rejected the N48,000 offered by government during the previous meeting held last week
The meeting is expected to reconvene this Wednesday by 4pm for continuation of negotiation where state governors are being expected to present their offers and not sending representatives who have no mandate to negotiate
A member of the tripartite committee on the National Minimum Wage, Professor Theophilus Ndubuaku who confirmed the development, said that the organized labour including the Nigeria Labour Congress and Trade Union Congress insisted on the presence of governors from six geo-political zones to agree on acceptable minimum wage, saying government is not serious with the offer of N54,000, far below the current wage of N77,000 for workers under the federal government
"We still told them that the ground they shifted means nothing. They have not started the negotiation because as of now, the take-home of the lowest-paid federal worker is over N77,000. By their standard, we have not started negotiating minimum wage".
“What we are negotiating now is wage reduction because what they are now telling us is that if we walk out of there if we agree on N54,000, that means we will come out and tell people who are already earning N77,000 that their wage has been reduced.
“We told them that a worker can’t start earning less than what he or she was earning. Is it that there is a reduction in inflation that the cost of living has improved, or is it that the cost of food items has come down?, he asked rhetorically
The organized labour had come to the negotiation table with a proposal of N615,000 which it described as a living wage for average workers in the country, considering the current economic realities
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