This includes the payment of the monthly N35,000 wage award to public servants in the local government, state and federal services. These must be implemented until a new national minimum wage is implemented.”
By Deborah Hassan
365Daily – The Trade Union Congress (TUC) has demanded that President Bola Tinubu Government should implement all agreements reached with organised labour in 2023, especially the national minimum wage.
The demand was made by TUC President, Festus Osifo, TUC President, in a 2024 New Year message jointly signed by the Secretary General of the union, Nuhu Toro, on Wednesday in Abuja.
Titled ”Our hope not renewed yet,” Osifo said in the message that the TUC had, in 2023, strived to ensure that social dialogue with the federal government prevailed, but they have failed to implement simple basic agreements with labour.
He said that labour had insisted that the October 2, 2023, agreements between them and the administration be notarised by the court, but ”the government has serially violated the agreements. For instance, item two states that ‘a minimum wage committee shall be inaugurated within one month from the date of this agreement.’
“Today, three months later, no such committee has been set up and this is our experience with this government in at least two previous agreements reached in June. TUC has resolved to demand from the Tinubu administration that in 2024, all agreements between labour and government should be implemented.
“This includes the payment of the monthly N35,000 wage award to public servants in the local government, state and federal services. These must be implemented until a new national minimum wage is implemented.”
He further demanded that a new national minimum wage must be negotiated and implemented, and if further delayed in the year, arrears must be paid, with inflation, which was running at 28.20 per cent, drastically reduced to the sub-Saharan African regional average of 9.4 per cent.
The TUC president urged the governments at state and federal levels to stop the unnecessary, economically unwise and unpatriotic tradition of taking loans.