Labour unions in Nigeria to begin indefinite strike over minimum wage

gedaliyah@lemmy.worldmod to News@lemmy.world – 254 points –
Labour unions in Nigeria to begin indefinite strike over minimum wage | Africanews
africanews.com

The two main labour unions in Nigeria have declared an indefinite strike as from Monday over what they terms as a disagreement on a new minimum wage with the government.

9

You are viewing a single comment

They had on Tueday [sic] refused the minimum wage proposal by the government at 60,000 Naira.

That $45 or 41 Euro. Not sure if that's daily, yearly, quarterly or what. That article left a lot to be desired, as evidenced by the typo I chose to include

https://www.thecable.ng/historical-review-nigerias-national-minimum-wage/

It looks like this would be a monthly figure. Based on this source minimum wage currently sits at 30.000 Naira ($22,45) /month.
From what I understand it is higher than what it was set at in the 80s, but the value of the Naira did drop quite a bit over time (when compared to the US dollar)

According to this website the 1981 wage would have been equivalent to $204, while the 2024 wage is equivalent to $24

Amazing how numbers can be anything you like but the end of the day, it isn't about the number but what you can buy with the proceeds from your labor.

In the end it's not about your absolute wage, it's about buying power.
If you can buy the same of more with your wage, your quality of life is going up.

The comparison to US dollars is probably skewing the picture somewhat (since the US dollar is quite strong right now), but I find it hard to believe that an eight-fold decrease in value doesn't negatively affect buying power.

It's monthly. Very few countries use something else for the time period for minimum wage.

Looks like you're right. Canada, the United States, Japan, South Korea, Germany, France and Australia seem to be the only ones after a quick search. I never knew that

I'm not sure which is a better system. Could you pay someone pennies daily and then give them a bigger paycheck at the end of the month to meet the minimum?

Or is it effectively the same system in action but with an additional minimum monthly pay?