STILL ON THE MINIMUM WAGE PALAVER

Labour should be realistic in its demands

The contentious issue of minimum wage for workers has dragged on for the past six months between the federal government and organised labour with the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) and Trade Union Congress (TUC) proposing amounts. While some of the figures being touted seem unrealistic considering the nation’s financial state, the ostentatious lifestyles of most political office holders do not offer logical persuasion to workers that government indeed cannot pay whatever they demand. We agree: Political office holders cannot continue to live in luxury yet deny workers living wages. But this is an old problem.

While receiving the tripartite committee report on minimum wage in 2018, then President Muhammadu Buhari pledged that the federal government would quickly transmit an Executive Bill (on national minimum wage) to the National Assembly for its passage. About 24 hours after, the presidency came up with a ‘clarification’ of the earlier position which more or less distanced itself from the report. At that period, the Nigeria Governors’ Forum (NGF) stated categorically that the only way its members could increase salary was to sack workers. The proposed alternative was for the federal government to readjust the revenue sharing formula in favour of the states so they could absorb the financial implication of any wage rise.

In the past, the NGF had held sessions with organised labour on the issue of minimum wage. But their position remains the same: each state should negotiate with labour on how much they can afford.  Whatever may be other misgivings, there is merit in the argument of the governors. As a newspaper, we have always queried the assumption that minimum wage should be uniform across all the states, without isolating the peculiarity and operating environment of each state. While we need a drastic re-orientation that requires the federating states to live up to certain fiscal expectations, we urge representatives of labour to be realistic in their demands.

There is no doubt that many of the states are facing hard times and may not be able to afford the minimum wage being demanded by both the NLC and TUC even with prudence in the management of their resources. But many of the governors are also to blame. Under the last set of military regimes before the current democratic dispensation, the number of commissioners in each of the states was limited to nine. Today, some states have over 30 commissioners and as many as 500 special advisers and personal assistants. All these are aside the large number of idle workers on the payroll who, like leeches, feed fat on scant resources in their states.

  We have always argued that state governments should be at liberty to reduce bloated workforce and retain only those that are productive.  For instance, of what value and relevance is enrolling typists on the payroll in this computer age? What is the essence of having as many as 20 drivers in a government agency that has no operational vehicles for them to drive?

All factors considered, the proposal by the Michael Imoudu National Institute for Labour Studies (MINILS) Director General and Labour veteran, Issa Aremu, that the range should be between N120,000 and N200,000 seems more realistic as a negotiation basis. Demanding wages that far exceed the revenue projection of the country is unhelpful.