LAST Wednesday, productivity was halted across the country as workers embarked on a three-day warning strike to press home their demand for the implementation of the N18, 000 minimum wage on which they had reached an agreement with the federal government.
This was consequent to the failure of the federal government to implement the report of the tripartite committee on national minimum wage headed by Justice Alfa Belgore which had been submitted since July and the government had indeed promised that its implementation would begin from that month.
The government’s last ditch effort to stop the strike did not succeed as the workers successfully observed the first day of the three-day warning exercise and was subsequently called off following further promise by government to fast track the legal niceties to its effective take-off.
However, the strike and the point at issue, a living wage for the country’s workers, bring to the front-burner a number of issues. The first of these is the integrity of government’s actions. Government has an obligation to honour agreements it freely covenants with anybody or institutions to avoid unnecessary buck-passing and resort to dilatory measures as was the case with the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU).
No comments:
Post a Comment