The Federal Government has once again failed to reach an agreement with the Organised Labour on the full implementation of the new minimum wage after it resumed negotiations on the consequential adjustment of salaries for workers on Thursday.
After about eight hours meeting that began at 5pm on Wednesday and ended at 2am on Thursday, Minister of Labour and Employment, Sen. Chris Ngige, told journalists that both parties have agreed to adjourn the meeting to 7pm today.
The minister said that both parties finally agreed on so many areas which they had earlier failed to agree on before calling for the adjournment of the meeting.
The minister said: “As you can see, we met and broke into committees, we come back, we finally agreed on so many areas which hitherto we could not agree on and we are adjourning the meeting. We have given assignments to some people on both sides and we will go and do the work and get back to us. The work involved is enormous. We are giving them the entire day to get back to us. Issues of money and wage adjustments as per different wage structures; we have about 12 wage structures presently in Nigeria which you know of. We don’t want to make mistakes that could be fatal and thereby put the whole exercise we have done in jeopardy. Therefore, we have consensually agreed that we reconvene this meeting at 7pm today. This will enable those that we have given assignments to complete the assignments and bring them back to us. We are very okay with the meeting. It is moving on smoothly and as you can see from here there is conviviality, it is very cordial, nobody is fighting. We disagreed about some areas but we have agreed back. That is the important thing. Let the work continue.”