As organised labour, federal and state governments bicker on the recommended N30,000 national minimum wage, stakeholders have advocated constitutional amendment to bring wage matters into the concurrent legislative list, as a way of addressing wage crisis going forward.
Presently, the Constitution puts wage in the exclusive legislative list. This means that only the Federal Government is empowered to legislate and fix national minimum wage for workers at both the federal and state levels, as well as those in the formal sector of the economy. Under the National Minimum Wage Act, signed in 2011, which prescribed N18,000, organised private organisations with 50 workers and above are expected to pay a national minimum wage.
But the stakeholders believe that moving wage from the exclusive to the concurrent legislative list, will allow both states and federal authorities to negotiate separately with labour and pay in accordance with resources available to them, and this will solve the protracted minimum wage debacle.
Dapo Oyewunmi, a lawyer and CEO of Centre for Law and Business, who spoke on the seeming wage logjam, on a national television in Lagos, on Friday, insisted that the way to go was decentralise wage negotiation.
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While the state governors who had opted for N22,500 are yet to accept the N30,000 recommended by the tripartite national minimum wage committee, which submitted its report to President Muhammadu Buhari on Tuesday, Lai Mohamed, minister of information and culture, said Wednesday last week that the presentation of the report to the President did not mean that the Federal Government had agreed to pay the recommended figure, as Buhari would still study the report.
“I think it (N30,000) was a recommendation. Mr President will consider it and will make his views known in due course,” Mohammed said.
But Oyewunmi, reacting to the development, said: “If labour has the interest of workers at heart, the way to go in the long run is bring wage into the concurrent legislative list.
“States should sit down with labour and look at what they have, the number of workers on their payroll. These are key determinants in wage negotiation given that all states don’t have the same resources.”
Ama Pepple, chairman of the tripartite national minimum wage committee, also agreed that taking wage out of the exclusive legislative list would address concerns often expressed by state governors over ability to pay, as each state would negotiate based on what was available to it.
She, however, cautioned that constitutional amendment takes time and requires a long process to achieve, and will therefore not solve the current issue given that her committee has submitted its report already.
Pepple, a former Head of Service of the Federation, advised the Presidency to forward the recommended N30,000 agreed by committee to National Assembly to legislate upon.
She said: “N30,000 was the best we could do as a committee. There were different figures thrown at us by various stakeholders and after about a year of deliberations and negotiations, we zeroed down to N30,000. I think that the Federal Government will pay. As for the states, where there is the will, there is always the way. There is no need for labour to resume their suspended strike.”
The organised labour has threatened to resumed its suspended strike if the N30,000 recommended by the committee and backed by the organised private sector is jettisoned by the government. Labour suspended its strike called for November 6, after all stakeholders in the committee signed to the N30,000 and same forwarded to the presidency.
