20% Salary Increment: Labour Indicts Defaulting State Governors

Organised labour union leaders have indicted some state governors of neglecting role of collective bargaining and subjecting Nigerian workers into servitude and then paying out stipends and relief payment rather than living wage.

This is even as they commended and called on other state governors to emulate governor of Lagos, Mr Sanwo-Olu, in payment of living wage rather than using what ordinarily belong to them as form of boosting their egos.

Nigeria Labour Congress [NLC], who made the call, described the current increment of salary by 20 per cent by Mr Sanwo-Olu of Lagos State as only giving back to the citizenry what actually is theirs.

NLC general secretary, Comrade Emmanuel Ugboaja, while speaking with LEADERSHIP, commended Sanwo-Olu for the gesture, adding that, governors who are fond of stiffening the people but on gradual process pay back what actually are the entitlements of the people should know that they are denying the collective bargaining which belongs to the workers.

On his own part, the director-general of Michael Imoudu National Institute for Labour Studies [MINILS], Ilorin, Kwara State, Comrade Issa Aremu,  called on other state governments to emulate the gesture of Sanwo-Olu over increment of salary for the state civil servants.

He commended him for the increase given crisis of food inflation and cash crunch occasioned by the controversial cashless policy.

Aremu recalled that President Muhammadu Buhari commendably raised minimum wage to N30,000, Aremu noted that, the Sanwo-Olu gesture also compliments the vision of for the president elect, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu on addressing the crisis of compensation among the workers in Nigeria!

It would be recalled that Mr Sanwo Olu, on Monday, increased the salary of workers in Lagos State by 20 per cent and backdated it to January 2023.