Organised Labour last night suspended its planned nationwide strike for one month following an agreement with the Federal Government. Though details of the Memorandum of Understanding suspending the strike, were sketchy at the time of this report.
The meeting was reconvened yesterday for both government and labour to find common ground and avert the planned strike by organized labour to force the government to address the suffering and pains of Nigerians, occasioned by the petrol subsidy removal.
Earlier yesterday, the National Executive Council, NEC, of NLC and its TUC’s counterpart, had met separately to review Sunday’s meeting with the Federal Government’s offers.
According to the sources, the joint resolution of NLC and TUC was presented to the government team around 5 pm.
But the meeting did not reconvene until 8.15 pm when the government team returned to the chagrin of labour leaders, almost left the venue in anger. Recall that President Bola Tinubu had on Sunday evening succumbed to the N35,000, provisional wage award demanded by labour after his initial N25,000 for the average low-grade worker to run for six months was rejected.
Instead, labour insisted that the wage award should be across the board and run till a new minimum wage expected to be negotiated next year is put in place.
A statement issued by the Minister of Information and National Orientation, Mohammed Idris explained that some of the resolutions reached at the Sunday meeting were that, “the issues in dispute can only be resolved when workers are at work and not when they are on strike.
“Labour unions argued for higher wage awards and the Federal Government Team promised to present Labour’s request to President Bola Tinubu for further consideration.
