No Notice Of Strike Over Minimum Wage Yet —NLC

President of the Nigeria Labour Congress, Ayuba Wabba, on Tuesday, said the union had not issued any strike notice to the Federal Government over the implementation of the new minimum wage.

Negotiation between government representatives and the joint negotiating council had stalled over their differences in the percentage increase in workers’ salary.

The leadership of Trade Union Council and other workers’ unions had expressed their dissatisfaction with what they described as “deliberate attempt” by the government to frustrate negotiation on the increase in order to benchmark the salaries raise to suit the fund gazetted in the budget for salary increase.

Workers are also of the opinion that if the government had its way, workers would only get meagre increase despite 66.6 per cent minimum wage increase from N18,000 to N30,000.

But, according to Wabba, the negotiation was going on smoothly with the government over the new minimum wage, adding that NLC met workers’ unions on Monday to deliberate on the issue.

He said, “Our own case is going on well. We met with our unions yesterday (Monday).

“The difference right now is about the consequential increase and we hope that through a normal process of dialogue, we will be able to sort that out.

“NLC, as an organised body. I’m not sure we have given any notice (of the strike) to that effect. If we reach a point of issuing threats, we will do that without hesitation.

“But I have seen information on social media. We are a credible organisation and we should be able to speak for ourselves.

“If we get to that point, we will be able to inform you. But, for now, the process is going on and we have been able to expand the scope of dialogue to include NLC/TUC and only limited to the unions in the public sector.”

NAN