The President of the Trade Union Congress, Festus Osifo has declared that the N250,000 benchmark remains the ideal minimum wage for workers in Nigeria.
Osifo also said that TUC and the Nigeria Labour Congress were meeting with officials of the Federal Government to reach an agreement on the minimum wage.
He disclosed this on Tuesday at a gathering on Tuesday in Abuja.
Discussions on a new national minimum wage has paused following the decision of President Bola Tinubu for more consultations before sending the bill to the National Assembly.
Osifo said negotiations on the new minimum wage has not been abandoned, rather labour and the government were fine-tuning the matter.
The Federal Government and Organised Private Sector have agreed on N62,000 as the new minimum wage, but labour is insisting on N250, 000.
“The minimum wage negotiations cannot be dead. The 2019 minimum wage (that has expired) took about two years to see the light of day. We started the negotiations in 2017.
“We promised you when we started in January (this year) that we will ensure this one is fast – tracked for us not to be in the conundrum that we were in 2019 which took two years,” the TUC president stated.
He insisted that the minimum wage was receiving attention, adding that the President wanted further consultations before submitting it to the National Assembly.
“So where we are today, we submitted the divergent position in June, when we did that you know clearly that Mr President came out to say that he wanted to consult across board which is the governors, Local Government chairmen, organised private sector and labour, so we are doing some level of reach-out and conversations.
“So that what will be submitted to the National Assembly will actually be a minimum wage that will cater for the poorest of the poor, so for the fact that in the media we are not shouting, we are doing some level of internal work so that this bill will be submitted in earnest soon. We still insist on the N250,000 benchmark as ideal minimum wage,” Osifo disclosed.
