The Nigeria Labour Congress has commenced mobilisation of workers across the country for a possible showdown over the move to remove the National Minimum Wage Law from the exclusive list to the concurrent legislative list.
The removal of the Minimum Wage Law from the exclusive legislative list to the concurrent legislative list will empower the states of the federation to fix their respective minimum wages for their workers.
The Acting General Secretary of the NLC, Mr. Chris Uyot, said on the telephone on Friday that the foremost labour centre would soon call a meeting of its National Executive Committee to decide on the next step to take.
Uyot called on the House of Representatives to be on the side of Nigerian workers by voting to retain the Wage Law in the exclusive list.
Uyot said Nigerians were unanimous in opposing the move to remove the wage law from the exclusive list at various constituency consultations held on the issue.
Ufot appealed to the House of Representatives to vote in accordance with the position of Nigerians at constituency consultations.
He said, “We are in consultation with the House of Representatives; we have urged them to keep to the promise made to Nigerians that they would uphold the peoples’ verdict from the constituency consultations which they carried out on the issue. During the consultations, the people said no to removal of the minimum Wage Law from the exclusive to the concurrent List.
“We have started mobilising workers, and a meeting of the National Executive Council will be convened soon for directives on action.”
The Senate had on Tuesday voted to remove the Wage Law from the exclusive to the concurrent list, an action which the NLC and the Trade Union Congress described as anti-people and a move to impoverish the Nigerian worker.
The two labour bodies also said the action of the Senate was a violation of the International Labour Organisation Convention 131, to which Nigeria is a signatory.
The President of the NLC, Mr. Abduwahed Omar, and his TUC counterpart, Mr. Bobboi Kaigama, had on Thursday condemned the Senate for being self-centred and acting contrary to popular will.
They said the decision of the Senate to vote for the decentralisation of the national Minimum Wage Law showed clearly that the upper legislative arm was acting contrary to the will of the Nigerian people and was indeed anti-people.
Speaking also, the Secretary General of the TUC, Mr. Musa Lawal, said it was part of the agreement reached at a joint meeting of the NLC and the TUC to approach the relevant organs for the next line of action.
He said, “As of yesterday, we agreed that we are going to call our organs for a possible cause of action, it is the organs that would give us powers to act.”