Vote against anti-minimum wage govs, Labour tells workers

Posted by admin Latest Politics Sunday, April 3rd, 2011

Indications again emerged on Sunday that Nigerians workers might take steps against governors who have shown a reluctance to implement the N18,000 minimum wage.

The President of the Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Universities, Mr. Promise Adewusi, gave the indication of a possible face-off between the governors and the leadership of the workers when he urged Nigerian workers to use their votes against governors opposed to the minimum wage.

Adewusi described governors resisting the implementation of the minimum wage as the enemies of the Nigerian workers who should be voted out.

Adewusi, a Deputy President of the Nigeria Labour Congress, made this comment while addressing journalists in Abuja on Sunday on the forthcoming Delegates Conference of SSANU scheduled to take place at the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Kaduna State, from June 15 to June 18.

Although Adewusi commended the President for the decision to sign the Minimum Wage Bill into a law to provide a legal backing for the implementation of the new wage, he said that the N18,000 was a starting point and not a living wage.

He said that the organised labour would resist any move to play politics with the lives of Nigerian workers and insisted that all the stakeholders involved in the process of implementing the new law must play their roles.

“We will not want anybody to play politics with the lives of Nigerian workers. Therefore, this N18, 000 must cut across.

“Those governors who are hesitating, those governors who insist that they cannot pay N18, 000 minimum wage are enemies of Nigeria and they should be flushed out and those who are not flushed out, we commit them to Holy Ghost Fire,”

He restated the belief of the labour movement in President Jonathan’s promise that he would ensure that the Minimum Wage Bill was not only signed but also implemented.

He demanded that there was need to make the Minimum Wage Act public to convince the Nigerian workers that the N18,000 Minimum Wage was not meant for federal workers alone but all workers in the country.

Adewusi said, “We trust Mr. President when he promised us that he was going to do everything within his powers to ensure that this bill was not only signed, but implemented.

“We believed him and that was one of the reasons why the three-day warning strike was called off after only one day.

“We still believe him; we trust him as a President that we can believe in but we need to convince the generality of our members who have been infested with all kinds of rumours.

“What will put an end to all those ugly rumours is by us sighting the content of this bill to know that it is truly a national minimum wage and not minimum wage for only the federal workers.

“This is a minimum wage that cuts across all employers of labour so long as you have 50 employees and above, be you state or local government; be you the private sector employment because this is one national minimum wage that is in a class of its own.

“This is the first time the small and medium scale enterprise had been brought into a collective bargaining process.”

-Punchwp_posts