MINIMUM WAGE: DON'T TRY IT, NLC WARNS GOV AGAINST PUSHING FOR SEPARATE WAGE FOR STATES

Against the background of remarks by Ekiti State Government of the likelihood of the new minimum wage making some states go bankrupt, organized labour said it was not done with the governors yet.

The labour unions asked the state chief executives to be battle ready as the workers would not demand anything less than prompt and adequate implementation of the agreed minimum wage.

Though, the Council of State had approved the N18, 000 new national minimum wage for onward transmission to the National Assembly for legislation, but the Ekiti State governor obviously pouring out the minds of his other colleagues on the issue said the new wage was a Federal Government wage.

He stated that as much as he was convinced that the workers deserved to be well remunerated, however, argued that the new wage was capable of rendering some states bankrupt as they were faced with the challenges of inadequate resources due to differential allocations from Federal Government.

General Secretary of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) told Daily Sun that there was no going back on the new wage at all levels of governance including the private sector.

He referred Daily Sun to a statement released by the congress on the suspected moves by the state governors to back out of the new wage implementation.

In the statement signed by him and the President, Abdulwaheed Omar, the congress said much as it appreciated that the efforts of the Council of State in approving the new wage and keeping faith with the agreement, the posture of the governors on the matter was worrisome and that the workers would not allow them to use blackmail to derail implementation.

They accused the governors of wanting to sabotage the process by raising the issue of federalism in which case each state in near future should be free to pay any amount it could afford and not a blanket wage.

The labour leaders alleged that some of the governors who briefed newsmen at the end of the Council of States' meeting gave an indication of planned move to sell the idea of legislation of separate wage for the state to the National Assembly

NLC said: 'The congress expresses its strong disapproval of the position advanced by the governors who briefed the press following the decision of the Council of States who have hinted that the process for the country's national minimum wage be deregulated so that states can pay whatever they wish to workers. We wish to unequivocally state that this suggestion, which they said is in line with the concept of federalism, is completely unacceptable to Nigerian workers. We therefore advise the National Assembly to disregard the advice.

'It is our belief that the framers of our constitution, in the instance of a national minimum wage, rightly recognised the logic of the Federal Government setting the minimum standard for the entire federation. It is essentially for that purpose that the issue of national minimum wage is in the Exclusive Legislative List. The intention, therefore, is that when an affordable minimum wage is set, other employers in the federation can then improve on it.

'Congress believes that the National Assembly is well equipped to carry out this task as they are representatives elected from all parts of the country. We wish to emphasize that this has been the practice since 1981 and we expect that this should continue.'

Warning that the workers would not allow themselves to be blackmailed, the congress in its statement noted that it 'will not allow workers to be blackmailed for the demonstrable ineffectiveness of governments at the lower level in rising up to the challenge of raising internal revenue to meet the needs of respective states.

'We equally believe that all states have the capacity to pay only if governors are willing to trim down the mammoth crowd of aides they appoint and who draw very huge chunk from the resources of their states but with little or no value added to the governance process.'

'Invariably, the argument by the governors of wanting to have separate minimum wages cannot be sustained since the governors, local council chairmen as well as councillors from the least endowed states receive the same amount of salaries and allowances with states like Lagos, Delta, Bayelsa and Rivers, to cite a few examples.'

It therefore called on the National Assembly to expedite action on the passage of the new National Minimum Wage Act to enable it to be reflected in the 2011 federal and state budgets so that we can avoid further dislocation of the economy by industrial disputes.

However, 'the Congress wishes to sound a note of caution that Nigerian workers, right from the creeks of the Niger to the fringes of the Sahel Savannah, will watch to take note of any attempt to sabotage this process by those outside the National Assembly who might be tempted to use the legislative process to attempt to introduce other extraneous factors that might impede a smooth implementation across the country.'