Minimum Wage: Comrade Isaa Aremu Assures Workers Of A Peaceful Negotiation
Zainab Tanimu
Kaduna, North-West, Nigeria
Nigerian workers have been assured of a peaceful negotiation with regards to the minimum wage implementation as a fruitful result is exppected from the ongoing negotiations between the organised labour and federal government.
According to labour, the ongoing process is not renegotiation but implementation.
This was contained in a statement signed by the NLC NEC member and labour member of the National Wages and Salary Commission, Comrade Isaa Aremu where he observed that “there is already a subsisting new Minimum wage of N30,000 signed into law by President Muhamadu Buhari.”
The signing of the N30,000 minimum wage into law by the president the labour leader said was part of the struggles.
“lt was an outcome of robust negotiations between organised labour, organised private sector, Federal and state governments.
This is also the 5th National minimum wage Act. The first was in 1981.
The ongoing negotiation about minimum wage implementation in the public sector is legitimate and expected and does not in any way mean there was a “crisis”. He said.
The statement further revealed that very soon an agreement would be reached.
“The Joint Public Service Negotiating Council is working with both the NLC and TUC to achieve the goal of a just consequential adjustment.
“What is at stake is not a renegotiation but implementation. But as the saying goes, the devil is in the details.
The new wage for workers is Godliness. The details are what we are working towards through dialogue with the government.
I have no doubt that there would not be any crisis.
There would be an agreement just the way we negotiated the past minimum wages.”
Good pay is “smart economics” he said; because workers pay increases effective demand for goods and service in a depressed economy like Nigeria.
Aremu had commended both the Kaduna and Lagos states governments for what he described as, “law respecting,” in implementing the new minimum wage.
