Oyo Workers Stone Leaders Over Minimum Wage!

Officials of the Oyo State chapter of the Nigeria Labour Congress incurred the wrath of their members yesterday for accepting the old minimum wage as the June salaries for workers in the state.
The state civil servants had threatened to begin a strike last Monday when it was confirmed that the government did not honour its promise to pay the workers N13,500 as their June salaries. Instead,
the government paid the old minimum wage of N9,400, which the workers had vowed never to go back to.
When Bashiru Olanrewaju, the state chairman of the NLC, mounted the podium to give a report on the meeting between the government's team and labour on Wednesday, he was not just booed by the highly disappointed members, pebbles were hauled at him and his executive committee members for accepting the offer.
As it is the case in other states of the federation, the issue of the N18,000 minimum wage approved by the National Assembly and assented to by President Goodluck Jonathan has created a huge gulf between the state government and its workers.
The government had argued that the financial position of the state would not support the payment.
But the workers insisted that the state is buoyant, saying they would not accept anything less that the approved minimum wage.
Though the two sides were still negotiating and never agreed on a conclusive position, the government still paid the workers' May salaries with the N18,000 scale.
"We met with the state government yesterday (Tuesday) and the governor said that the old rate of N9, 400 had already been paid into the workers' accounts and it was not ready to withdraw it. The salary was paid pending when agreement would be reached on the ongoing negotiation. The government said that it would pay the balance of the salary later after the negotiation would have been concluded", Mr Olanrewaju explained at the Agodi, Ibadan office of the NLC.
Feeling of betrayal
The workers were expecting to hear that their leaders insisted on nothing but N18,000. They viewed their leaders' concession to the state government as a compromise and rained stones on them.
"We reported to the workers what the state government told us. The workers themselves admitted that the N9, 4000 was paid into their account last week. But they have insisted that they would not take any balance. And this is the situation. They started protesting, throwing things at us", Mr Olanrewaju said.
The NLC boss said they are waiting for the national secretariat of the union to know their next line of action.
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