Civil servants urge government to begin negotiation for new salary structure 

The Trade Union Side (TUS) of the Joint National Public Service Negotiating Council (JNPSNC), has called on the Federal Government to kick-start negotiation with the Joint Council on the issue of consequential adjustments and produce a fresh salary structure in line with the new national minimum wage.

Chairman of the TUS, Abdrafiu Adeniji, and Secretary, Alade Lawal, emphasised that now that the N30,000 monthly minimum wage bill has been signed into law, millions of workers especially civil servants, were hopeful that implementation of the new salaries would commence immediately.

According to the labour leaders, the normal practice is that once a new minimum wage is fixed, a fresh salary table is generated so that employees in all Salary Grade Levels (SGLs) will benefit from the new emoluments.

According to the TUS, the generation of a fresh salary table in line with the new minimum wage would also prevent distortion and overlapping.

The TUS recalled that after the 2011 National Minimum Wage was fixed, the consequential adjustment was not properly handled.

“Instead, the Government decided to award N900 across board for all the other grade levels in the civil service thereby distorting the salary chart. This led to a lot of crisis, a scenario that should not be allowed to repeat itself this time around.

“The Government should not continue to generate avoidable crisis in the civil service and this is why we are now urging it to do the needful by urgently inviting the Joint Council with a view to commencing negotiation on a new salary table that will meet the aspirations of workers.

“This is the standard practice all over the world and Nigeria should not be an exception,” the union stated.

They posited that once a new salary table was generated, it would help to maintain the current relativity among all grades in the civil service, as well as go a long way to assist the state governments to have a seamless implementation of the new minimum wage and where negotiation will be required at all, it will be a minor exercise.