Minimum wage: Labour, FG shift grounds as meeting continues Wednesday

The meeting for the consequential adjustment of the N30, 000 national minimum wage on Tuesday made some progress as both parties shifted grounds on their earlier positions. 

At end of the meeting that lasted five hours, government stepped up from the 11 per cent for grade levels 07 – 14 and 6.5 per cent for grade levels 15 – 17 to a new offer of 17 per cent for grade levels 07 – 09, 15 per cent for workers on grade levels 10 – 14 and 12 per cent for grade levels 15 – 17.

Also, the Labour team sifted from 29 per cent to 25 for grade levels 07 – 14 and 24 per cent to 20 per cent for workers on grade levels 15 – 17.

Deputy President of the NLC, Amaechi Asugwuni, said “Negotiation is still ongoing even though we actually thought negotiations will be concluded today; we can’t predict the negotiations. Therefore, adjournment became necessary. To the best of our knowledge, the struggle will still continue. Tomorrow we will meet by two and that meeting will also determine the fate of that. We expect that we will close that meeting positively. 

Head of Service of the Federation, Mrs Folashade Yemi, said:  “We’ve had a very peaceful engagement. So far the Labour side has discovered that there is just one side of the welfare of workers and both sides made a lot of concessions but we discovered that there are some grey areas that need to be ironed out.

“Some documents and information are being sorted out, which we are providing and by the grace of God, tomorrow discussions will continue and we believe that we will be able to get everything resolved”. 

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