OYO STATE: Makinde’s N80, 000 minimum wage approval amidst fee hike across state-owned tertiary institutions is a Greek gift!
CDWR holds that the state leadership of Labour ought to have demanded payment of arrears of the approved minimum wage from July and immediate reversal of fee hike including adequate funding of all the state-owned tertiary institutions
The attention of the Oyo State branch of Campaign for Democratic and Workers Rights (CDWR) has been drawn to several media reports over the recent approval of minimum wage of N80, 000 by Seyi Makinde-led state government including the agreement to limit and delay the financial implementation till January 2025. According to media reports, the new minimum wage salary structure shall be effective nominally from July 1st, 2024 but financially from January, 1st, 2025.
Going by this agreement, it means that the minimum wage of N80,000 is only assumed to have been approved since July 1st 2024 but will not translate into any increase in the current salary earned by workers in the state until January 2025, except for workers who retire between July 1st and December 31st whose retirement benefits will be calculated with the use of the new minimum wage salary structure.
The CDWR faults this kind of agreement. It is divisive and will short-change the mass of workers in the state civil service. As far as we are concerned all categories of workers in the state civil service are also entitled to the payment of the arrears of the approved minimum wage of N80,000 from July 1st 2024 as stipulated by the new minimum wage Act. What is good for goose is also good for decision!
This is why we hold that the state leadership of labour ought to have insisted on July 1st, 2024 as the commencement date for the financial implementation of the approved M80,000 minimum wage. The CDWR notes the introduction and subsequent extension of the payment of wage award of N25, 000 to civil servants and N15, 000 to pensioners by the state government. The wage award was only meant to be a relief package to cushion the devastating effect of the untold hardship and mass suffering unleashed on mass of the Nigerian working people by the President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s decision to hike the price of petrol under the pretence of subsidy removal side by side other anti-people policies. It can never be a justification for delaying the commencement of the implementation of the N80, 000 minimum wage to January 1st, 2025.
Moreover, it is important to state that this decision is a clear indication that Makinde-led state government is far from being called a workers’ friendly government. No workers friendly government would decide to delay the implementation of a minimum wage which has already been eroded by the combination of high rate of inflation and cost of living including a geometric increase in school fees across the tertiary institutions under its ownership. The affected state-owned institutions include Ladoke Akintola University of Technology (LAUTECH), The Polytechnic of Ibadan, Oyo State College of Agriculture and Technology, Igboora to Adeseun Ogundoyin Polytechnic, Eruwa among others.
The new outrageously exorbitant fees imposed on students across all of these institutions will definitely increase for workers with children therein an unprecedented scale of economic hardship the mass of the Nigeria working people are going through at this present time. It is in the light of this, we of the CDWR conclude that the approved N80, 000 minimum wage amidst the current wave of fee hike across the Oyo State owned tertiary institutions is nothing but a Greek gift for many workers in the state civil service!
We hereby urge the state leaderships of the NLC and TUC to welcome the approval of the new minimum wage of N80, 000 with caution. Rather, they should call for the review of the agreement to include financial implementation of the minimum wage to takes effect from July, something which means that arrears of minimum wage must be paid. They should also demand the immediate reversal of fee hike and the adequate funding of all the state owned tertiary institutions. These are the only way the approval of the N80, 000 minimum wage can translate into some improvement, albeit marginally, in the living standard of workers in the Oyo state civil service.
We of the CDWR also urge the state leadership of labour not to limit the negotiations for the implementation of the N70,000 minimum wage to the public sector. Similar, negotiations should also be extended to the private sector and must be linked with a campaign against casualisation and other forms of indecent labour practices bedevilling workers in private sector across the state.
Bamigboye Abiodun (Abbey Trotsky)
Coordinator, CDWR Oyo State Branch
CDWR email: [email protected]