The Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) says it will guarantee industrial peace in any state of the federation where the N30,000 minimum wage is not being implemented in 2020.
Ayuba Wabba, president of the NLC, stated this on Tuesday, December 31, in a new message, tagged “Workers’ welfare and good governance are our priority.”
According to the NLC, “we use this medium to implore states that are yet to implement the new national minimum wage including the states that are yet to begin negotiation with labour on the consequential wage adjustment to speedily do the needful.
“ In tandem with our position as adopted and communicated after a stakeholders’ meeting on December 11, 2019, organised labour in Nigeria will not guarantee industrial harmony in states that fail to implement the new national minimum wage by December 31, 2019.”
Wabba said the national leadership of the NLC had directed all state councils to be on the standby to robustly engage state governments that failed to obey the minimum wage laws.
“We wish to remind state governors that no excuse would be good enough for failure to pay. The ongoing revelations on the monumental looting perpetrated by former governors prove that only an intent to loot, and deadened conscience not availability of resources would be the reason any governor would hesitate to pay workers the N30,000 new national minimum wage and the consequential adjustment in salaries.”
The NLC insisted that the new national minimum wage is now a law and state governors do not have the luxury to choose whether to pay or not.
The NLC also signaled its intent to undertake aggressive campaign for massive employment generation and decent jobs in the year.
“In the year 2020, the NLC will mount a very robust campaign for the generation of mass jobs and for already existing jobs to be decent. To this end, the NLC is perfecting plans for a National Job Summit in 2020. We will get stakeholders: experts, policymakers, concerned demographics and workers on a roundtable to find answers and solutions to Nigeria’s burgeoning unemployment crisis.”
The NLC, in the spirit of growing the economy and creating jobs, called on Nigerians especially the elites to change their consumption habits, saying “we must consume what we produce. We must patronise “Made in Nigeria”.
JOSHUA BASSEY
