THE scheduled meeting between the organised labour and Federal Government today, over the 30-day ultimatum to meet the demands of the former as contained in a signed Memorandum of Understanding, has been postponed.
A top official of the Nigeria Labour Congress, who spoke with this newspaper, said the meeting will now hold next Tuesday.
He said that the meeting was postponed at the instance of the Federal Government; “they shifted it because they did not remember that the supposed date was to be their Federal Executive Council meeting.”
The essence of the meeting with the government is to agree on the milestones and demands yet to be met and the reasons why and agree before any action is taken.
According to him, organised labour said they don’t have confidence in the Minister of Labour being in the meeting.
“The organised labour suspended the last planned strike action and gave the Federal Government 30 days to meet our demands,” he said.
Speaking further, he explained that as organised labour what they agreed on was that once the ultimatum expires, an organ meeting would be called that will now assess what the Federal Government has done.
He added, “If the organs believe that what the government has done is not substantial and not in line with the agreement signed, they will give fresh directives on how to handle the situation without giving any further notice of industrial action.”
According to him, if the government has not done anything in the reckoning of the organs, they may order that we proceed with industrial action immediately and we would do that.
However, he mentioned that the organised labour demands are out there in the open, and it is for every Nigerian and every worker to look at the situation and see how many of our demands that the Federal Government has met.
Meanwhile, he noted that the government should be the one telling organised labour and Nigerians which of the demands they have met so far.
However, he hinted that the Federal Government has not met a lot of labour demands.
He further mentioned that everything would be reviewed at the next meeting to decide on the best way forward.
Also speaking with this newspaper, the Secretary General of the Trade Union Congress, Mr Toro Nuhu, stated that the scheduled meeting between the organised labour and the Federal Government would assess the progress made so far and discuss the remaining demands that have not been met.
He noted that during this meeting, the organised labour would engage in discussions with the Federal Government regarding the outstanding demands.