NLC Denies Issuing Strike Notice

  • NLC says an industrial strike is the last resort.
  • FG meeting with Labour Reps yielded a positive outcome.

The Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) has said labour did not issue any strike notice in anticipation of a failure to reach an agreement with the Federal Government on consequential adjustment of the minimum wage.

This was stated by NLC’s General Secretary, Emmanuel Ugboaja while making the clarification on the sidelines of negotiations in with the Federal Government in Abuja, the nation’s capital last night.

In his explanation, he said the initial statement issued said was that labour couldn’t guarantee industrial peace, if, after October 16, 2019, the Federal Government fail to reconvene the meeting for the adjustment.

READ: Minimum Wage: Labour Optimistic as Negotiating Council Meets FG Today

Ugboaja, therefore, maintained that the workers’ union has other avenues to ventilate its grievances, adding that strike would only be a last resort.

In the meeting held yesterday, the Government and labour yielded a positive result in the negotiations. That has therefore been scheduled to continue at 2:00 p.m. today.

Peaceful engagement

It was gathered that the FG has shifted their ground by moving up from 11 percent for Grade Levels (GL) 07-14 and 6.5 percent for GL 15-17 to a new offer of 17 percent for GL 07-09, 15 percent for workers on GL 10-14, and 12 percent for GL 15-17.

Same was the case with the labour’s team as they also shifted from 29 percent to 25 for GL 07-14 and 24 percent to 20 percent for workers on GL 15-17.

Speaking on the outcome of the meeting, Acting Head of Service, Folashade Yemi, said the engagement was peaceful.

READ: READ: N30,000 Minimum Wage Takes Immediate Effect – Buhari

“We have had a very peaceful engagement. But we discovered that there are some grey areas that need to be ironed out. By the grace of God, tomorrow, discussions will continue and we believe that we will be able to get everything resolved.”

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