It appears another industrial action is imminent as the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) recently slammed the thirty-six (36) state governors in the federation, that came after information emerged that the governors unanimously agreed on 22,500 naira as the new national minimum wage, with the labour vowing not to shift grounds and still insisted on 30,000 naira.
The recent happenings triggered the labour to revert to it’s initial demand of 66,500 naira, the NLC president Comrade Ayuba Wabba said: “The demand for Organised Labour is not N30,000; our demand is N66,500. Let me also put the record straight. The official demand of Organised Labour is N66,500 which from all indexes now we are going to refer back to it,”. With his latest declaration, Nigerians are now left to wonder what the motive of the labour leader was by doing such.
Before I proceed, I would love us to take a peep at the basis and genesis of the minimum wage, and what the minimum wage seeks to achieve. My personal view of the minimum wage is the lowest sum of money that a worker with the lowest qualification should receive before he/she can render services. Hence, what the minimum wage seeks to achieve is to protect workers, increase standards of living, and reduce poverty, consequently, minimum wage can also boost the morale of workers and increase productivity.
As a developing country, we can’t afford to have an unnecessarily high minimum wage, even developed nations can’t! An unnecessarily high minimum wage would increase unemployment, increase poverty, and isn’t good for the growth of small businesses. An excessive high minimum wage would demand businesses to increase the prices of their products and services so that they can meet up with the high salary demands, some company would also have to downsize by sacking some of it’s employees, hence the need for carefulness and sincerity at this critical point.
Even though I’m not a financial expert, it’s a known fact that minimum wage is dependent on some variables and indices. Minimum wage in Nigeria can’t be computed without variables such as inflation, oil revenues, value added tax (VAT), gross domestic product (GDP), employment figure, etc. Therefore, I think the unending arguments and disagreements over the minimum wage is needless, the government and the labour force should just come up with their facts and figures based on the variables and indices on which minimum wage is dependent and make a sincere calculation that would be most suitable for our economy.
The welfare of workers at all levels is important, but that doesn’t mean we should kill the economy because we want better pay, the labour should go back to the drawing board and make a sincere calculations if they haven’t done so, and if they already done that, they should avail Nigerians on how they arrived at their figures, they should employ the services of economists, statisticians, and other financial experts, when this is done, they can be rest assured of the support of all Nigerians.