TUC draws battle line with N/Assembly over minimum wage

The parliament’s action means that state governments and other employers of labour are at liberty to determine what to pay their workers, contrary to what currently obtains, where the National Assembly fixes a national minimum wage.President and General Secretary of the TUC, Comrade Bala Bobboi Kaigama and Comrade Musa Lawal in a joint press statement […]

The parliament’s action means that state governments and other employers of labour are at liberty to determine what to pay their workers, contrary to what currently obtains, where the National Assembly fixes a national minimum wage.
President and General Secretary of the TUC, Comrade Bala Bobboi Kaigama and Comrade Musa Lawal in a joint press statement singled out the Senate as the arm of the legislature that is particularly insisting on pauperising Nigerian workers.
TUC urged the Senate to immediately reverse the decision or face a long “drawn-out mass protest of unprecedented dimension. The decision is wicked, unpatriotic and grossly irresponsible and must never see the light of day.
“Unlike its counterpart, the House of Representatives, the Senate is playing ignorance of the principle and concept of the minimum wage as practised in decent societies all over the world. Again and again we have written and intimated them on global trends and best practices on the issue,” TUC said.
It added that the “Senate’s position will undoubtedly encourage the state governments…to start paying ‘starvation’ wages to their workers, whereas the current minimum wage of N18,000 cannot even meet the immediate needs of the poor masses. This is sure to heat up the polity and lead to predictably unsavoury consequences.
“The fundamental underlying principle for the fixing of national minimum wage is to ensure that workers, especially the un-unionised and unskilled, are not exploited by their employers to the extent that the worker’s take-home pay cannot sustain him,” it also said.
The statement accused fifth columnists of trying to scuttle the oncoming 2015 general elections by taking an action that all Nigerians will rise against.
“The timing of the decision, so close to the preparation for general elections in 2015, might actually be an attempt by the unscrupulous characters to provoke a national industrial crisis at a time when the nation is barely managing to cope with ongoing ones.
“Nevertheless, unless the Senate wisely reverses its decision pronto, we, as Nigerian workers, shall not hesitate to resort to that option,” TUC said in the statement.