Even though some state governors contend with the ₦615,000 new minimum wage that the trade unions want the federal government to implement soon would not just favour government workers, the focus of any negotiation made so far, private sector employees would also get their equal share depending on their numbers, is what the plane is looking like.

Inflation rising unabated since the beginning of the year had made the Nigeria Labour Congress and the Trade Union Congress survey the impact of shooting prices on households.

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Nigerians still feel the effect of crucial presidential decisions taken in mid-2023 which included removing the petrol subsidy and unifying the exchange rate of the naira to the United States dollar. That made the general purchasing power, both the rich and the middle class, reach a low and that is why the unions have proposed ₦615,000 as the new minimum wage instead of ₦30,000 that workers are currently getting.

It has become imperative at this point that we inform Nigerians who may not have known already the foundations upon which our initial demand for a ₦615,000 (Six Hundred and Fifteen Thousand Naira) new National Minimum Wage is based upon, says the Nigeria Labour Congress president Comrade Joe Ajaero in a statement yesterday.

The figure, he adds, was a product of a painstaking effort through which we captured the cost of living of Nigerian workers and masses in all parts of the country.

It was essentially an outcome of [independent] research conducted by the NLC and TUC on the cost of meeting the primary needs of an average family around the country. Our research was based on a family with both parents alive and four children without the burden of having other dependents with them.

A questionnaire was designed and sent to all the State Councils of NLC and TUC from where these questionnaires were sent to our members in all the Local government areas in the country to gather the monthly cost of living and there is data to back this up, the NLC leader shared.

The outcome of the research was then forwarded to the 37-member tripartite committee on the minimum wage in the form of the ₦615,000, recommendation, but the Nigeria Governors Forum want the capacity of each state to be considered before imposing new figures on all.

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Any amount agreed between the unions and the federal government will be what every governor would be expected to pay, but not only them, if everything goes according to plan.

The unions, according to a labour congress official who interacted with Punch News and did not want to be named, have demanded that the new Act should have a two-year life with an agreement for automatic adjustment in wages any time inflation exceeds 7.5 per cent.

We have also demanded that every employer with up to five workers in his employ shall pay the new minimum wage and have asked for the strengthening of monitoring and compliance mechanisms to penalise non-complying state governments and organisations.

Ordinarily, employers in the private sector would usually take the initiative to improve their staff welfare and mostly pay beyond the current minimum wage with extra benefits. Nonetheless, a newly introduced general wage pegged at ₦615,000 would set a compulsory standard at all levels.