The President of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), Joe Ajaero, has insisted that the organized labour will agree for nothing less of N615,000 as new minimum wage.
This comes after the federal government increased its offer from N48,000 to N54,000, which was rejected by organised labour, News About Nigeria reports.
Ajaero made the disclosure in an interview with Daily Trust.
Ajaero revealed that the NLC carefully considered the impact of the fuel subsidy removal and other economic factors before arriving at the N615,000 figure. He stated that the union added up the costs of feeding, housing, gas, education, and medical expenses to determine a suitable wage for Nigerian workers to survive on.
Ajaero explained that the NLC excluded expenses like communication, tithes, and offerings from the calculation.
He noted that the removal of the fuel subsidy and subsequent price fixing, which led to fuel prices rising to over N700 per litre, significantly affected workers’ livelihoods.
The NLC president went on to say that the union considered global experiences, including the United Nations’ position that no one can survive on less than $2 per day. Based on this, the union estimated the monthly expenses for a family of six, including N270,000 for feeding, N40,000 for accommodation, N50,000 for education, and N50,000 for Medicare, among other expenses.
“And if you take it from that angle for a family of six, giving them two dollars per meal, in a day, you’ll have $12 and about $360 in a month. I’ll leave the calculation for us to do. Let us come to the issue of the cost-of-living index which we normally use.
“We gave the government a breakdown; for feeding, we gave everybody in that family N500 per meal. If you give everybody in a family of six N500 naira per meal, one person will get N1,500 per meal in a day. And for the six people, they are going to have about N270,000 for feeding in a month.
“We looked at about N40,000 for accommodation, for education for 4 children, we put N50,000 assuming that your children should not go to private schools because you can’t do that with that amount of money.
“For Medicare, assuming there’s no surgery or serious medical issue, we put N50,000. For electricity, we put N20,000. That was even before this electricity tariff increase.
“And you discover that if today, you buy a token of N20,000, it no longer lasts as much as before. For Gas/kerosene, considering that people refill every two weeks, at the cost of about N15,000 – N17,000 for 12.5kg cylinder, we estimated about N30,000 a month.
“All these are how we arrived at the sum of N615,000. Note that we didn’t add expenses like communication, tithes/offerings in church or any other social obligation.
“Now we brought it out for negotiation. However, in doing this, we said that if the government can check all these other issues like the inflationary rate and the value of our currency, then we can adjust our demands.
“The labour movement wouldn’t have asked for more than N200,000 before the removal of subsidy. Apart from transportation and house rent, you know the cost of living. A bag of rice now costs over N70,000, bread and other food items are very expensive too.”
Recall that on Monday, the NLC and Trade Union Congress (TUC) issued an ultimatum to the Federal Government, following a joint National Executive Council meeting.
The unions demanded a reversal of the recent electricity tariff hike by May 31, 2024.
In a statement, the unions condemned the unilateral increase in electricity tariffs by the authorities, describing it as “unjust and burdensome.”
