NLC insists on N66, 500 minimum wage

President of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) Ayuba Wabba said the organised labour has proposed N66, 500 to the tripartite committee on national minimum wage.

Wabba said increase in the existing minimum wage of N18, 000 was aimed at protecting the most vulnerable worker, which cut across both public and private sectors.

He said this yesterday during the Tripartite Committee on National Minimum Wage Public Hearing in Abuja.

Wabba said the official minimum wage gotten in 1981 through the agitation of the NLC was in conformity with International Labour Organization (ILO) convention 131 and convention 26, which prescribed minimum wage as a way of protecting the most vulnerable workers from exploitation.

He said the minimum provides that states can pay higher saying, “When we signed the minimum wage in 2011, some states offered to pay more than N18,000. What we are saying is that you need to have a minimum, while across the country, you can pay higher. This also applies to the private sector.”

Osun State Governor Rauf Aregbesola enjoined the organised labour to demand for fair, just and implementable minimum wage adding that “We must equally consider the value of output vis-a-vis the ratio of the value of input in production, which is called productivity.”