The Federal Government on Sunday said the provisional wage increase announced by President Bola Tinubu for all low-income workers for six months would cut across all treasury-paid workers.
The Chief of Staff to the President, Femi Gbajabiamila, revealed this to State House correspondents at the end of a four-hour marathon emergency meeting with the leaders of Organised Labour.
The compromise was reached to avert the proposed indefinite nationwide strike declared by the organised labour.
Following the development, the Nigeria Labour Congress and the Trade Union Congress were expected to suspend their planned strike slated to commence on Tuesday after discussing the resolutions with their state chapters and affiliates on Monday (Today).
The meeting came hours after the President in his Independence Day broadcast announced the approval of a N25,000 provisional wage increase for certain category of federal workers for the next six months.
Briefing journalists on the meeting outcome, Gbajabiamila said, “There was a lot of chatter on Twitter about the issue of low-income workers only falling into the category of the provisional wage increase. And we did communicate with the President and he quickly did say and agreed that all categories of workers will be given the wage bill. There is nothing like low income, median income or high income.”
He expressed optimism that the labour unions would backtrack on their planned strike.
“Hopefully, we expect that Labour will call a meeting of their various branches and executive tomorrow to present the agreements that have been reached, and we pray and we believe and we hope that the strike will be called off on Tuesday,’’ he noted.
