The Nigeria Employers’ Consultative Association NECA), has called on the Federal Government to set machinery in motion on minimum wage review, in accordance with the 2019 Act.
The employers body also advised that issues of wage increase and business sustainability should be dealt with concurrently.
The Director-General of NECA, Adewale-Smatt Oyerinde, who made the call, also urged the government not to lose sight of Convention 131 principle of tripartism of the International Labour Organisation (ILO), which is the basis for the minimum wage.
The tripartism of ILO Convention 131 involved representatives of employers, workers (Nigeria Labour Congress and Trade Union Congress of Nigeria), and the Federal Ministry of Labour representing the Federal Government.
Oyerinde said: “We all know the national minimum wage will expire next year and we have also urged the government to put in place the machinery of the committee of national minimum wage. ”We should also not lose sight of Convention 131 that is the basis for the minimum wage setting principle of the ILO.
”That is what we have used to arrive at the N18,000 national minimum wage, the framework of the minimum wage that was set at N30,000. It is a tripartite framework with NECA representing the employers, NLC and TUC representing workers and the Federal Ministry of Labour representing the federal government.
”Five years ago, there were representatives of the Governors’ Forum from the six geographical groups and there were other stakeholders that were part of that negotiation.
“But the fundamental or core element of the setting of national minimum wage is the employers, the workers and government and we think the principle for appropriateness should be respected. ”It is an ILO convention that we subscribe to, and we strongly believe that it is something with which we should align.
”The timeline is good enough but we hope that the government will do the needful, so we can kick- start the machinery of arriving at that highly expected minimum wage in 2024.
“The flip side is if the private sector is struggling and businesses are relocating, companies are divesting, the natural consequence is they will release staff into the job market.
”It is an enlightened self interest for the government to create an enabling environment for the private sector. Currently, the private sector is bedeviled. Beyond the issues of taxes, we also have regulatory and legislative onslaughts on organised businesses.
“We have been battling the National Assembly ad-hoc committees for several months, several years on the legality of their invitations to organised businesses. We have complained. The matter is currently at the Supreme Court.
”All those issues create apprehension in the mind of the local business person and a foreign direct investor. We need to fix the issue bedeviling the organised private sector, so they can expand, grow and remain competitive, which is the pathway for us to address the issue of unemployment.
”If we don’t deal with it, the universities continue to churn out graduates and there is no place for them to go. It bounces on society, on our socio-economic strata because we fuel the propensity for crime to increase. Those young guys have to find a way to survive.
“It will be an enlightened self-interest to government to deepen its collaboration with the organised private sector. Even with the issues of wage increase, if you don’t fix the issues bedeviling the organised private sector, the more it is becoming difficult to run businesses, the more the cost of doing business is increasing, the more the cost of goods and services.
”At the other end, increasing wages by 1,000 per cent will be nullified by the increasing cost of the goods and services. It will negate it.
”That is why we advise that those issues (wage increase and business sustainability) are dealt with concurrently. If not, we will just continue on the path we have always taken.
Job losses, unemployment all have a direct impact on the level of insecurity we have in this country.”