Bimbola Oyesola
As members of the Organised Labour returned to President Bola Tinubu for the continuation of the discussion on Minimum Wage, the leadership of the two labour centres, the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) and the Trade Union Congress (TUC)’s position might not have shifted from the interview held recently in far away Geneva, Switzerland.
The two leaders, Joe Ajaero, the NLC President and his counterpart in TUC, Festus Osifo though may not want to preempt the president on the new wage that would be sent to the National Assembly, they insisted that the only minimum wage that could be acceptable should be truly national in terms of alleviating the economic crisis presently faced by Nigerian workers and the masses.
The Labour leaders in this interview also expressed their dismay on the electricity tariff and reason why it is a time bomb that can detonate anytime soon.
They also spoke on the refinery and why Nigerians may have reason to smile soon on the recurrent fuel crisis.
Minimum wage agreement
The President said that the agreement reached between unions and government will be forwarded to the National Assembly to legislate.
But like you will observe, the unions have started responding that we do not have any agreement reached. Some people who have seen the proposals will tell you that there are two positions.
The President also said that they are not a dictatorial government. He said that was why they did not clamp down on the unions. However, it is on record that no civilian administration had clamped down on the trade unions from Obasanjo’s regime till now. That is one of the advantages of democracy.
One expects the president to reach out to us; I mean Labour, the employers and the people that represented government in the negotiations to find a middle ground on how to solve the problem.
However, the trade union movement still has that confidence that he would do this. We do not expect him to just go ahead and announce a figure which the organised private sector would not pay. Also, I do not expect him to announce a figure that will not be acceptable to the unions and workers.
I expect him at that point to use his machinery and the goodwill of his office to reach out to all these parties, smoothen up the negotiations and reach a conclusion that would be acceptable to all the parties.
Democracy activists
The second point he made was that he commended the role played by Kokori. However, it is different from the role played by the trade union movement in the struggle for political independence.
Whether Milton Dabibi, NUPENG, PENGASSAN, or any other union, they all played a role and not
individual. One expects that these things should be properly documented as they are whenever the history of the struggle for democracy is recounted to properly highlight the roles of the trade unions in maintaining political independence.
And all the people who were on the sidelines happened to be the real beneficiaries of democracy and not the trade unions and unionists that made the real sacrifices. That should be featured prominently.
Electricity tariff reversal struggle
That issue was left in the hands of the National Assembly. The Speaker met with organized labour where he assured us that was not a problem.
He said that they have directed NERC and those in the power sector to reverse. The Minister of Power was also there.
One thing about the way we operate is that we give people the benefit of doubt. We discovered that the regulatory authority was not doing what they were supposed to do. However, the National Assembly has said that they want to have a public hearing about the issue. But that doesn’t mean that we’re depending solely on that, because this is an area where even the employers are complaining about.
It is like a time bomb waiting to happen because you cannot even pay the current tariff even with 60,000 minimum wage. The increase is not sustainable because reports indicate that companies are folding up. And when that happens, workers suffer, employers suffer, companies suffer, Nigerians suffer.
That is a sector that for over 15 years we have always complained that the people that it is being handed to does not have the capacity even to change a transformer. We need to sit down and look at a conscious master plan that will address the challenges in that sector.
Minimum Wage Review
That issue is part of the issues we have been discussing. We are equally worried that the content of the discussion/report was not transmitted to the President.
More so, we have not seen the content of what they said have been submitted. We insist on seeing them appending every page.
What we had in the committee was between two and three years. So that we can look at the performance of the economy and decide the next step. So the mention of 5 years by the President in his speech show that the message was not transmitted to him or it was not captured the way we discussed it at the Committee.
Waiting time for actualisation
In 2019, it was the organised private sector and Labour that agreed on 30,000. The government however, was not OK with it, so they started bringing up figures like 24,027 and all that.
As regards the timing, if you could remember the 2019 Minimum Wage Act, the conversation on that started very early sometimes around 2017. What that means is that it took about two years for it to become a reality.
But if you look at the situation we have now, it is quite different. We started in January. Now we are in June and we’re talking about transmission to the National Assembly. What that means is that we are much more faster than the discussions of last tenure. And one of the reasons we have achieved this mileage is also because of the push and the strikes we had. What broader urgency was because of the ultimatum we earlier issued on May 1st.
We had over 8 meetings in May because of the ultimatum that we issued. If we had left it open-ended, maybe till December, we might have still been discussing the same thing. The approach that we brought to it this year is slightly different from the approach that we used to use. Probably because then the economy was not as bad as it used to be today.
I can promise you that once the president transmits it to the National Assembly, we are going to pressure them to act fast. The bill will not just be sitting in the National Assembly forever. Because it is in the interest of governments, both executive legislature and the interest of organised private sector to see that the Minimum Wage Act is passed. It is our responsibility to protect our constituents by pushing and ensuring that the bill is passed.
There are also arguments that salaries should be tied to inflation and devaluation depending on the purchasing power they offer to the citizenry.
So in this case, the timing may not be necessary. What is more important is what money can buy at that point in time.
Inflation
The presentation we made was not this or that, we looked at timing and the value of the currency at the moment. The initial presentation of 615,000 was based on the cost of living index. You took into consideration the value of the currency as at today and the cost of commodities in the market.
We put into consideration several factors, for instance, if CNG buses were operating and workers had vouchers for boarding, cost of transportation would not have been high. Equally brought the idea of assuming government had its own rice that was selling for 40,000 when rice is at 80,000. It will further crash the price that we demanded.
If we had some of these things in place, we would see that the dynamics will change and the value of the currency would change. We put up all those arguments and nobody challenged it. And again, if you look at the increase in tariff, which I expected the organised private sector to have complained bitterly that their businesses were closing. They should have been thinking of how to resolve the issue of tariff with government and protesting some of the taxes levied on them by government.
Another thing that we should note is that there must be arrears. Since the minimum wage expired in April, it means that whatever we agree on today that we would demand arrears.
That is why we need to act fast, and that is what prompted some of these responses.
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