A chieftain of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and director-general, Progressive Governors Forum (PGF), Salihu Lukman, has urged the revival of the National Labour Advisory Council (NLAC) to address challenges of negotiation between Labour leaders, employers and the government.
The PGF boss said such a model was used around 2005 for instance to resolve the challenge of amending pension law.
According to Lukman, the campaign for the retention of minimum wage in the exclusive legislative list under the 1999 Nigerian Constitution as amended is being handled by the leadership of organised labour, especially Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) based on deliberate distortions of facts.
In a statement released Friday in Abuja, he said the current debate about whether states could make minimum wage laws “is basically about correcting the distortion in terms of applying the principles of minimum wage fixing as provided in ILO Convention 30 of 1928.”
It read in part, “What is required to address such a problem is to revive the National Labour Advisory Council (NLAC), which normally has representation from labour, employers and government. It used to serve as the tripartite body in Nigeria for the resolution of major labour challenges. As things are, NLAC hardly exists.
“If we have NLAC, why can’t we have members agree to all the variables determining minimum wage in the country – productivity, conditions of living and affordability, based on which the national minimum is reviewed on an annual basis being the proposed benchmark for the country? The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), National Salaries, Wages and Income Commission and National Productivity Centre (NPC) can handle the task of providing information about the variables of productivity, cost of living and affordability. With objectively computed information, the process of achieving consensus that highlights the minimum threshold for wages can be handled very effectively.
“Agreement under NLAC can serve as the federal minimum wage. Once agreement is reached at the level of NLAC, a prototype minimum wage bill can be developed and sent to the National Economic Council (NEC), chaired by the vice-president of the federal republic with governors of the 36 states as members. Following consideration and adoption by NEC, states can then domesticate provisions of the agreement as contained in the prototype bill based on their peculiar circumstance.”
He said the fourth distortion that needed to be corrected was the proposal to transfer minimum wage to the concurrent legislative list “is not to stop the payment of N30, 000 minimum.”
