The labour unions in Nigeria will formally write state governments on Wednesday and ask them to begin negotiation on the consequential adjustments arising from the new minimum wage.
The unions said this on Tuesday in Abuja at the end of a meeting of their states joint councils.
They also said the percentages in the agreement they had with the federal government will be the minimum they would accept from any state.
Under their agreement with the federal government, workers in the COMESS wage structure on salary grade level 7 got 23 per cent increment, grade level 8 got 20 per cent, grade level 9 got 19 per cent, grade level 10 -14 got 16 per cent while grade level 15-17 got 14 per cent.
For those on the second category of wages structures, CONHES, CONRRISE, CONTISS etc, Level 7 got 22.2 per cent, Level 8-14 got 16 per cent, while Level 15-17 got 10.5 per cent.
The secretary of the unions’ Joint National Public Service Negotiating Council, Alade Lawal, said the national leaders handed three documents over to the state negotiating council chairmen.
”The first one is the agreement we signed with the federal government on the consequential adjustment. We have decided to develop a table on consolidated public salary structure and the consolidated health sector salary arrangement.”
He said the documents were given to state negotiating council chairmen as a guide in their own negotiations in their states.
”The document will not hinder their negotiation with state governments. It is for the personal use of our members in the states, we are not forwarding it to the state governments,” he said.
“We are hopeful that by December 31, all negotiations should be wrapped up. In areas where we have difficulties, we have decided to move in as a group to shut down the space towards ensuring that implementation is
done.”
FG agreement is minimum standard
According to Mr Lawal, the agreement of the unions with the FG is the minimum for the states.
”There are some states that have low salary structure, they have to discuss something higher than what we had with the FG.
“It depends on the peculiarity of the states. If you say 23.2 per cent increase for a level 7 officer in the federal civil service, it boils down to about N15,000. But if you apply the same percentage for workers on the same level in some states’ civil service, it translates to about N4,000. In that case, you have to be able to negotiate a higher percentage to be able to get something close to N15,000 we are talking about in this case and that is where the negotiation comes in,” he said.
“That is why we don’t want to give a blanket statement on what to do. With the discussion we have with the state officers, they know what to do,” he said.
