N500,000 Or N700,000?: NLC President Gives Update On New Minimum Wage

The president of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), Joe Ajaero, has disclosed that the labour union is yet to adopt a specific figure to present to the tripartite committee as the new minimum wage for Nigerian workers.

According to Ajaero, the figures of N500,000 and N700,000 are merely suggestions from the state labour unions submitted during zonal hearings on the minimum wage and not the official position of the NLC.

The NLC president made this known in a chat with Punch on the sidelines of the North-East zonal public hearing by the tripartite committee on national wage in Yola Adamawa State.

He said the NLC secretariat has not adopted or announced any amount, and the figures flying around should be disregarded by the public.

He said, “The N500,000, N700,000 you are hearing are being collated at the level of the states. In Lagos and other places, I think they are about N700,000 while in other places they are talking about N500,000 which are inputs collated from geopolitical zones.

“But the NLC secretariat has not made any presentation, these minimum figures are what is coming from the states. When we collate them then we’ll do a central presentation based on the raw materials we are getting from states.

“It (minimum wage) has to be relative to the cost of living in those states. You will agree with me that rent here is not as that in Abuja, and not the same thing as in Lagos. So relatively speaking you won’t have a straitjacket-like presentation by Labour in all the states.”