NEWS
Minimum Wage negotiation stalled as FG fails to make fresh offer
Last night, June 6, talks about the new minimum wage between Organized Labor, NLC and the Federal government came to a dead stop.
This happened because the negotiation team for the Federal Government didn’t come up with a new deal above the ₦60,000 that was already made public.
This happened after President Bola Tinubu told Wale Edun, Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, on Tuesday to finish figuring out how much the new minimum wage would cost and come up with a plan that is reasonable, sustainable, and practical.
The President made it clear that this needed to be taken care of right away by ordering that the government’s proposed agreement be ready by Wednesday so that talks with Organized Labour could begin again.
This order was part of a larger call to speed up all the steps in the discussions so that they could end quickly.
But when the meeting to negotiate started up again on Wednesday at 3:30, it was clear that the government team wasn’t ready to make a new offer.
Sources close to the negotiation table told Vanguard that the meeting couldn’t move forward because the government didn’t have a new deal.
A source at the meeting said: “The meeting was adjourned to give the Minister of Finance time to meet the deadline given to him by the President to present cost implications to him.
“We just deliberated generally and then they (the Federal Government team) said we needed to adjourn because they needed to get to the President. You know he (President Bola Tinubu) gave them an ultimatum to give him the cost implications.
“So we could understand that they did not have anything to give us since they had not given the President the cost implications. Those present at the meeting were the Minister of Finance, Minister of Budget and Economic Planning and the Minister of State for Labour. So, we will be resuming negotiation tomorrow (today) by 2pm.”
On whether the Finance Minister gave any assurance of getting the President’s mandate before today’s meeting, the source said: “They do not have a choice, we are not bothered about them. We do not think they have a choice because they cannot disobey the President.
“If they decide to disobey the President or if the President decides to renege on his promise, we all know the consequences.”
