The Federal Government may incur additional 315 billion naira in wage bill in the next six months for the newly introduced allowance for federal workers.
This came as Organised Labour agreed to suspend its proposed nationwide strike for 30 days, following the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding with the Federal Government after a marathon meeting. The resolution followed over five hours of deliberations between the Federal Government and Labour at the Chief of Staff Conference Room of the Presidential Villa, Abuja.
Announcing the outcome of the meeting to State House correspondents, the Minister of Labour and Employment, Simon Lalong, said the NLC and TUC accept to suspend for 30 days the planned Indefinite Nationwide strike scheduled to begin today. Lalong said the memorandum shall be filed with the relevant court of competent jurisdiction within one week as consent judgment by the Federal Government.
However, the NLC President, Joe Ajaero, said the unions would revisit the agreement if the Federal Government failed to fulfil their demands. According to the agreement, the Federal Government grants a wage award of N35,000 only to all Federal Government workers beginning from the month of September pending when a new national minimum wage is expected to have been signed into law.
Meanwhile, the Federal Government had on Sunday said that the provisional wage increase announced by President Bola Tinubu for all low-income workers for six months would cut across all treasury-paid workers.