BY VICTOR AHIUMA-YOUNG & CHINYEREABIAZIEM
LAGOS — ORGANISED Labour, yesterday, threatened to declare a nationwide strike without notice should government breach the agreement reached by all the parties, Tuesday, on the implementation of the N18,000 new minimum wage

This came as private sector employers warned that incessant strikes had further plunged the economy into comatose and urged the Federal Government to address basic economic fundamentals to stimulate the economy.

At the 54th Annual General Meeting, AGM, of the umbrella body for the private sector employers, Nigeria Employers Consultative Association, NECA, President-General of TUC, Comrade Peter Esele, said they would continue to witness strikes in as much as employers in public and private sectors of the economy refused to respect the sanctity of agreements or followed due processes in their actions and policies.

Reacting to media reports that governors were considering pulling out of Tuesday’s agreement on the new minimum wage, Esele said: “I hope the report that the governors are considering pulling out of Tuesday’s agreement on the implementation of the N18.000 new minimum wage is not true. If they do, we will declare an indefinite strike without notice. There will be no negotiations until after the strike.”

TUC’s President-General called on NECA to “recommit itself to the basis of its avowed candour and equanimity, reasonableness and clear-headed thinking even in the face of crisis for which the body was known over the years.”

Earlier, President of NECA, Chief Richard Uche, decried incessant strikes in the country, lamenting that “the year 2010 was quite challenging in the industrial relations space. It was characterized with unprecedented and alarming incidence of strikes.

“From the NLC’s strike on the issue of the national minimum wage, the doctors’ strike on improved welfare package and to so many others, pitifully, too numerous to mention. These strikes are, at best, an anathema to national development. The economy that had been struggling to come out of the woods was further plunged into a comatose state.”

At a time when the economies of the Americas and Asia were witnessing gradual and steady growth out of the economic recession, the Nigerian economy was still bedeviled with work stoppages. This calls for concern and positive action by all stakeholders.”

He called on the Federal Government to urgently address the nation’s economic fundamentals to return the economy to the part of growth, stressing that the business environment remained challenging and quite inhospitable with the myriads of business environment-related problems that businesses had to grapple with.

According to him, “Most organizations in the private sector have been compelled to continue to be ‘de facto’ government of their own, generating their own power, providing their own security, water and sometimes involved in the capital intensive work of repairing roads. All these added to the cost of doing business.”