The Organized Labour Sunday night’s meeting with the Nigerian Senate, National Assembly and the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, SGF, George Akume has ended in a deadlock.
The meeting was aimed at reaching a truce to suspend the planned indefinite strike over a new minimum wage.
The National Assembly had initiated the mediation meeting aimed at preventing the nationwide shutdown by the Labour but the meeting ended in Abuja few minutes ago without an agreement.
Festus Osifo, Chairman of the Trade Union Congress (TUC) said that they don’t have the powers to suspend the strike against the backdrop that there are organs that they must report to before a final decision could be taken.
Osifo said, “There was an appeal from the Senate President to call off the strike. On our part, we said we cannot sit here and just call off the strike because we need to report to our people. We will take all their pleas to our organs. For now, we don’t have the powers to call off the strike.”
Organised labour is demanding N494,000 as the new minimum wage for workers.
However, the Nigerian government is proposing N60,000, saying that the sum proposed by labour is unrealistic.
Since the meeting was unsuccessful, the strike will proceed as planned from Monday morning.
