The National leadership of Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC, has directed its state chapters to immediately commence negotiations with their state governments to arrive at consequential adjustments on the N30,000 new minimum wage.
The labour parent body, however, asked the state chapters to await the table which will be drawn by the federal government in line with the recent agreement with labour on the consequential adjustments.
Deputy National President of NLC, Comrade Amaechi Asuguni, gave the directive as the outcome of NLC 2019 National Leadership Retreat that ended in Enugu yesterday.
Asuguni said that the national leadership of NLC will also send monitoring committees to states to entire standardized agreements so that no state will shortchange others, even there would be minor differences with regard to the capacity of each state.
He said, “The outcome of this conference is that the agreement has been reached, a table will be worked out at the federal level and sent to the states. We want a table that will be brought out to be a guideline so that state councils will not go and state formulating different tables so that there will be a minimum standard.
“That is our position; that headquarters of NLC will guide the states so that they will work within the benchmark of the table so that we don’t have a staggered or anyhow agreement by the state government and the labour.”
NLC advised workers in the country not to be in a hurry saying it has not been easy to reach the agreement and having reached the agreement, there is a need to put in certain things in motion to come out with the table.
“You can see the percentages, they are different, with different categories of levels. So it will be worked out holistically, you don’t just rush. This table hopefully by next week, we are thinking it should come out. It is not something to be rushed out.
“We want the workers to be patient, the patience they had while the negotiation lasted they should have that patience, the agreement has been signed, the consequential adjustment agreement has also been signed, we are just waiting for the time for implementation.”
The labour leader said that it will be unfortunate if any state refuses to comply with the new minimum wage act, and vowed that “labour is there to engage them by any means legally possible”

Source:- Vanguardngr