. Commits to N57,000 proposed by FG
By Stanley Onyeka, Lagos
The Nigeria Employers’ Consultative Association (NECA), yesterday, said it will be impossible for the private sector to meet the new minimum wage being demanded by the organised labour.
The Director-General, NECA, Adewale-Smatt Oyerinde, who said this in a statement on Sunday, said: “It will be practically impossible to guarantee enterprise sustainability and job security with the current demands of organised labour.”
Mr Oyerinde argued that “With organised businesses declaring over N1trillion in combined losses and many shutting down their businesses for different reasons, while others are relocating to other climes, the ability to pay the prevailing N30,000 was already compromised.”
This, he said, is further compounded by rising interest rates, astronomical logistics cost, increasing energy tariff and multiple taxes, levies and fees.
Accordingly, he said, NECA is committed to the N57,000 earlier proposed at the Tripartite Committee Meeting on National Minimum Wage.
However, labour is not having none of this, as a meeting of the Committee on Tuesday with representatives of the Federal Government, the Organised Private Sector and labour ended in deadlock.
The workers had again rejected the government’s offer of N57,000 as the new minimum wage.
Rather, labour was reported to have reduced their demand to about N500,000 down from the initial N615,000 it initially proposed.
It will be practically impossible to guarantee enterprise sustainability and job security with the current demands of organised labour.
But NECA is convinced about the reality of the government’s offer of N57,000 given prevailing economic conditions, noting that the amount represented a 90% increase in the current N30,000 National Minimum Wage.
Mr Oyerinde also assured that NECA would continue to support the welfare of workers and the protection of their jobs, which could only be guaranteed by the survival of the enterprise.
Following negotiations on the new National Minimum Wage, he urged the Tripartite Committee to prioritise job creation and job security, given the worrisome and rising rate of unemployment and underemployment in Nigeria.
He added that the Committee should refocus its effort on protecting jobs, boost the capacity of the private sector to create more jobs, and ensure sustainability and ability to pay.
He argued that productivity should be a key driver of higher wages.
Mr Oyerinde continued: “According to the National Bureau of Statistics, the combined rate of unemployment and time-related underemployment as a share of the labour force population (LU2) increased to 17.3% in Q3 2023 from 15.5% in Q2 2023.
“In specific terms, the unemployment rate increased significantly in Q3 2023 at 5.0%.
“With these figures, more efforts should be concentrated on keeping more people in employment, while the government continues to implement its planned interventions in transportation, food security and general macroeconomic stability.”
