Abuja, Nigeria – Organised Labour has rejected the Federal Government’s revised proposal of a N54,000 minimum wage, announced on Tuesday. This decision was made public by one of the Labour leaders who participated in the meeting, in a telephone conversation with Vanguard.
The Federal Government initially offered N48,000 as the new minimum wage, which led to Organised Labour, including the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) and the Trade Union Congress (TUC), walking out of the Tripartite Committee on Minimum Wage negotiations. The latest proposal of N54,000 was also deemed insufficient by Labour representatives.
Last week, Organised Labour firmly instructed the Federal Government to abandon any notion of setting the new minimum wage at N100,000, urging the government to take wage negotiations more seriously. Labour officials emphasized that they calculated N615,000 as the appropriate minimum wage, using the lowest acceptable standard of living as a benchmark.
The rejection of the N54,000 proposal highlights the ongoing tension and significant gap between the Federal Government’s offers and the demands of Organised Labour, underscoring the urgency for a more realistic and agreeable minimum wage for Nigerian workers.