The Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC, has declared January 8, 2019, a day of ‘mother-of-national-protest’ against the President Muhammadu Buhari’s refusal to commit to the N30, 000 new minimum wage agreed on by the Tripartite Committee that negotiated the wage.
Recall that organised labour is demanding an upward review of the minimum wage from N18, 000 to N30, 000, an amount which the governors, under the aegis of the Nigerian Governors Forum, NGF, insist they cannot pay.
Recall also that Buhari, on Wednesday, Dec. 19, 2018, while presenting the 2019 Appropriation Bill, said he would set up a technical committee to review how the proposed new wage could be paid without government incurring more debt.
The organised labour, however, rejected this, insisting that the tripartite committee that negotiated the minimum wage was technical enough. It therefore said it would not be part of any further negotiations on the minimum wage describing Buhari’s position as a delay tactics.
It has also given the president till December 31, 2018, to send the bill to the National Assembly.
In a statement issued on Friday night, the NLC president, Ayuba Wabba, stated that the resolution to embark on a one-day protest in January was reached at a meeting of the National Executive Council of the NLC on Wednesday in Abuja.
The protest, he said was to express labour’s “anger and total dissatisfaction over the delay by the federal government in transmitting, enacting and implementing the new national minimum wage of N30,000,” adding, “The NEC-in-Session approved that the protests should hold in all state capitals and the Federal Capital Territory Abuja on January 8, 2019. The NEC mandates all industrial unions and state councils to fully mobilise workers and coordinate with other labour unions for this mother-of-all protest.”
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The NLC also condemned the actions of the Ogun State Government in failing to reinstate the union’s chairman in the state who was sacked during a strike action in 2016.
The statement read; “The NEC particularly took strong exceptions to the unrelenting attitude of the Ogun State Government to frustrate efforts to peacefully reinstate the NLC Chairman in Ogun State, Comrade Akeem Ambali who was sacked from the employment of the Ogun State government in the middle of a 2016 strike action to protest injustice against Ogun State workers.”
He disclosed that the Ogun State Government was owing workers who had retired in 2012.
“Ogun state has not paid workers who have retired their gratuity since 2012. Even those paid before then were severely shortchanged as the Ogun State government used an unknown and illegal instrument, the so-called “Basic Rent and Transport,” BRT, to calculate gratuity due to workers.”
According to Wabba the Ogun State Government is the highest debtor on Contributory Pension Scheme, CPS, having not remitted the Contributory Pension Scheme for an accumulated and contiguous period of one hundred and six (106) months.
He said: “The Ogun State Government has refused to release 7 months check off dues for workers to trade unions in the state. This is despite an agreement the State Government signed with workers to use 50% of the Paris Club Refund to offset debts owed Ogun State workers,” he said.
