Organised labour on Wednesday threatened to embark on a nationwide strike from October 16, if the federal government fails to reconvene the meeting of the committee negotiating the consequential adjustment on the new minimum wage.
The Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) and the Trade Union Congress (TUC) at a meeting with the Joint National Public Service Negotiating Council (JNPSNC)-Trade Union Side) in Abuja, warned that labour would not guarantee industrial peace in the country if their demands were not met by government.
Public sector workers in Nigeria have been contending with frustrations from day to day, following the inability of the federal government and organized labour to reach a deal over a new wage that came into effect more than six months ago.
“Despite this patriotic gesture, government has kept insisting that it can only pay 11 per cent for officers on grade levels 07-14 and 6.5 per cent consequential wage increase to public workers for officers on levels 15-17.”
According to them, the naira has suffered devaluation from N150 to $1 in 2011 to N360 to $1 in 2019, a depreciation of 140 per cent.
The unionists said that since the last national minimum wage of N18,000 was put in place, workers had been forced to suffer huge inflation and astronomical hike in the prices of essential goods and services.
They pointed out that petroleum price had been hiked from N87 per litre to N145 per litre which translated to 60 per cent price increase and that electricity tariff increased by about 60 per cent.
“Of recent, the Value Added Tax (VAT) has been reviewed from 5 per cent to 7.2 per cent.