The Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) said it has made a submission to the tripartite committee on a new minimum wage to reflect the current economic realities in the country. The General Secretary of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), Dr. Peter Ozo-Eson who made this known at Abuja during an interview said the new demand was submitted to the tripartite committee after an agreement with the stakeholders and the Trade Union Congress during its last meeting.
He said: “We have taken a position when we made the initial demand on the government, which is almost two years back. But then when we got to the tripartite committee and the committee called on all stakeholders involved to submit a memorandum.
“In responding to the request for a memorandum, we then use current economic indices to make a fresh demand. So, what we place and what we demand is an outcome of analysis we carried out. We did the analysis using the current economic table and data of the nation and of course, that came to something different. “We are going to maintain what is in the memorandum that we have submitted to the tripartite committee and it is not something or a figure we will be discussing in public.”
He added that the new minimum wage has been defended before the committee in view of the current economic situation. He said, “We have also formerly made the presentation to the committee and we have defended it and we have a different submission from the initial one. We have also taken account of changes in the first demand and the current position.” The labor union had demanded N56, 000, up from the current N18, 000 as minimum wage two years ago which the tripartite committee is considering.
