Barring any last minutes change, President Bola Tinubu is expected to meet with the leadership of the Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC, and the Trade Union Congress, TUC on the lingering and contentious new national minimum wage.
The meeting, it was reliably gathered is expected to hold around 4 pm and it is categorized as private.
Recall that the Tripartite Committee on the new National Minimum Wage has submitted its report to President Tinubu.
The report has two figures as the federal government and the organized private sector had offered N62,000, while the organized labour demanded N250,000.
Though the matter came up for deliberations at a recent Federal Executive Council meeting, President Tinubu was reported to have stepped down the matter for want of time to consult further with other stakeholders.
It is not clear whether the President will make a pronouncement on a new wage benchmark but he has promised to send a bill on a new national minimum wage to the National Assembly.
Confirming the meeting on Wednesday, the President of TUC, Comrade Festus Osifo said, "The president has invited the organised labour (NLC, TUC) for consultation tomorrow (Thursday 11th July,” he said in a short text message.
On Tuesday, Osifo told reporters at the Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria (PENGASSAN) Women Commission’s maiden Annual Convention in Abuja that organised labour was optimistic that the government would approve what can be described as a living wage for the poorest of the poor.
He had also written off insinuations from some quarters that the negotiations for a new minimum wage was dead.
His words, "minimum wage negotiations cannot be dead, you know when we started this conversation you asked us that in 2017 if you remember we started the minimum wage that was signed in 2019, it took about two years to see the light of day. We promised you when we started in January that we will ensure this one is fast tracked for us not to be in the conundrum that we were as at 2019 which took two years.
"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 let 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. Of course, we still insist on the N250,000 benchmark as idea minimum wage".
Osifo further said Labour expects that “what will be submitted to the National Assembly will actually be a minimum wage that will cater for the poorest of the poor.”
Progress on a new national minimum wage appeared to have stalled after President Tinubu said he needed to consult with stakeholders before sending the bill for enactment.
In his June 12 broadcast, the President said an executive bill would be sent to the National Assembly to formalise the new minimum wage agreement.
Osifo said some level of “internal work” was ongoing before the bill would be submitted in “earnest.”
He said: “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 that we would ensure this one is fast-tracked to avoid the conundrum that we were in 2019, which took two years.”
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