Organised Labour on Monday said it has presented fresh demand for the new National Minimum Wage for workers to the tripartite committee earlier set up by the Federal Government. The General Secretary, Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) Dr. Peter Ozo-Eson, who disclosed this in an interview in Abuja, said the earlier demand by labour, which was presented two years ago, had been overtaken by the present economic realities in the country.
He explained that the fresh demand was submitted at the last meeting of the tripartite committee after an agreement among Labour leaders.
“We have taken a position when we made the initial demand on the government, which is almost two years back. But then when we got to the tripartite committee and the committee called on all stakeholders involved to submit a memorandum, in responding to the request for a memorandum, we then used current economic indices to make a fresh demand. So, what we placed and what we demanded is an outcome of analysis we carried out.
“We did the analysis using the current economic table and data of the nation and of course that came to something different. We are going to maintain what is in the memorandum that we have submitted to the tripartite committee and it is not something or a figure we will be discussing in public.”
He noted that the fresh demand was contained in a memorandum signed by the NLC and the Trade Union Congress (TUC).
“We have also formerly made the presentation to the committee and we have defended it and we have a different submission from the initial one. We have also taken account of changes between the first demand and the current position.”
