The Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) General Secretary, Emmanuel Ugboaja, said labour did not issue any strike notice in anticipation of a failure to reach an agreement with the Federal Government on consequential adjustment of the minimum wage.
While making the clarification on the sidelines of negotiations in Abuja last night, Emmanuel Ugboaja explained that what the initial statement issued said was that labour could not guarantee industrial peace, if, after October 16, 2019, the Federal Government does not reconvene the meeting for the adjustment.
Ugboaja maintained that “Labour has other avenues to ventilate its grievances and strike would only be a last resort.
Government and labour meanwhile yielded grounds in the negotiations yesterday, with talks scheduled to continue 2:00 p.m. today.
The government moved up from 11 per cent for Grade Levels (GL) 07-14 and 6.5 per cent for GL 15-17 to a new offer of 17 per cent for GL 07-09, 15 per cent for workers on GL 10-14, and 12 per cent for GL 15-17. Also, labour’s team shifted from 29 per cent to 25 for GL 07-14 and 24 per cent to 20 per cent for workers on GL 15-17.
Responding to the development, Folashade Yemi, Acting Head of Service, said: “We have had a very peaceful engagement. But we discovered that there are some grey areas that need to be ironed out. By the grace of God, tomorrow, discussions will continue and we believe that we will be able to get everything resolved.”
