The Nigeria Labor Congress, on Tuesday, threatened to shut down the country for a month in protest against plans by the National Assembly to deregulate the national minimum wage.
NLC’s threat came as the nation awaits a new national minimum wage following months of negotiations between Organized Labor, the Federal Government, and the Organized Private Sector.
NLC President, Joe Ajaero, declared the position of the union while speaking on the sidelines of the 67th Nigeria Employers’ Consultative Association Annual General Meeting in Lagos.
Ajaero said, “As we are here, a Joint Committee of the Senate, the House of Representatives, and the Judiciary are meeting. They have decided to remove section 34 from the Exclusive legislative list to the concurrent list so that the state governors can determine what to pay you and so that there will be no minimum wage again. You cannot decide what you should earn.
“The very moment the House of Representatives and the Senate come up with such a law that will not benefit Nigerian workers, they will be their drivers and gatemen, and there will be no movement for one month. We cannot accept any situation where the governors and the National Assembly members will foist a slave wage on workers and force poverty on the citizens. Organized Labor will not accept it.”
The NLC president further stated that “We don’t have a situation where people determine their wages that amounts to some level of illegality. In the constitution, there is a provision for equal work for equal pay. If we go into job analysis and job evaluation, we may discover that a clerk here may be doing the same work as the clerk in Sokoto.
“The so-called decentralization of wages to pay somebody here less than what the other person is receiving is against the concept of equity and equality before the law.”
According to the NLC president, the International Labor Organization recognizes wage as a national law, saying it is not for the sub-nationals.
The labor leader maintained that “every country has their minimum wage and some states are paying higher than the basic minimum wage, and that is the position of the law anywhere”.
However, he said, some people instigated by the governors were saying they would not be able to pay N60,000 even when their members were in the meeting with labor, saying this was being done in bad fate.
“We have put our members on notice that if these people succeed in coming up with such unpatriotic and obnoxious law. This democracy they are playing with, we have enough in this country in terms of hardship. Some people, based on their privileged positions want to inflict more Injuries on the workers and citizens of this country and that will not be accepted,” he stressed.
He added that the labor movement will not accept “slave wages”.
“Every worker in Nigeria across the country is seen as Nigerian workers and any attempt to discredit them in a federation will first be resisted by the NLC.
Source: Punch Newspaper