The organized labour, made up of the Trade Union Congress and the Nigerian Labour Congress on Friday announced that the strike will commence on Monday, June 3 as they are unable to enter into an agreement with the federal government over a new minimum wage.
The President Bola Ahmed Tinubu-led administration has failed to agree with the labour unions despite several attempts at negotiations.
The federal government has administered their proposed minimum wage at different stages of negotiations including #60,000 proposed at the last meeting which the labour insisted that it was far beyond their #497,000 asking price.
Meanwhile, the Director General of the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN), Segun Ajayi-Kadir, has appealed to the organised labour to reconsider its decision to embark on a nationwide strike from June 3rd over the tripartite committee’s inability to agree on a new minimum wage.
Ajayi-Kadir, who is on the part of the organised private sector in the tripartite committee, said he does not believe that the labour walking out of discussions and declaring strike would help matters.
“We cannot afford to cripple the economy when all we needed to do was continue to build it. I think President Tinubu was very clear when he emerged as president that these are not going to be easy times and I think we needed to tighten our belts to deliver an economy that we know has been seriously battered,” Ajayi-Kadir said on Channels Television’s Sunrise programme on Saturday.
“Of course, the government on its own side has to demonstrate leadership, sensitivity and sense of and sense of mind as well as the sense of occasion of the period that we are in.
“So, government expenditure, government choices of what needed to be done, how much to be spent, the cost of governance itself, all of it has to come to the table.
“I think what labour is actually worried about is that they appear to be the ones on the brunt of it but we needed to be able to engage, walking out on the process and declaring strike, I do not think that that is what is going to solve this issue.”
