On Monday, labor unions in media companies owned by Lagos State began a three-day warning strike in protest of the failure to pay the minimum wage.
The employees are also demonstrating against their exclusion from the state’s Oracle database for wage payments.
The employees of the Lagos State Broadcasting Corporation, which are affiliated with the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ) and the Radio, Television, Theatre and Arts Workers’ Union (RATTAWU), ceased their work.
The personnel included employees of Lagos Traffic Radio, Radio Lagos/Eko FM, and Lagos Television.
They claimed that because the state administration had not complied with their demands, the strike had become necessary.
For hours, the employees sung songs of togetherness as they moved among their many locations. There was also a band performing for them.
To emphasize their demands, the protesting workers carried banners with various slogans, according to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN).
The inscriptions read, “Give us Oracle and take the revenue generated”, “Palliatives and subventions are not working”, “Oracle is the answer,” and “All we need is Oracle! Save our today and secure our future”.
Other statement read, ”Non-implementation of new minimum wage is anti-labour”, “Minimum wage, a must! Our sweat is drying up”, “Save us from career stagnation”, and “LTV, Radio Lagos, Traffic Radio are not liability, we are asset to the government”.
Speaking to journalists, Mr. Adeleye Ajayi, Chairman of the Lagos State Council of NUJ, stated that the media professionals were calling for equitable treatment and compensation for being at the forefront of advocating government policies.
He added that both RATTAWU and the NUJ had issued various ultimatums and had shown enough patience for the government to comply with their demands, which included the payment of the new minimum wage and inclusion in the state’s Oracle database for salary payment.
“Both NUJ and RATTAWU are quite aware of this. We have given different ultimatums – a 10-day ultimatum, a 21-day ultimatum, and the last and final one was a seven-day ultimatum.
“I think these are ultimatums for the state government to accede to the requests of our members.
“Our members are very committed, they are very dedicated; they are very patriotic, they have no closing hours, and I think they should be well-remunerated.
“Our members should be integrated into the Oracle database. Oracle database is like the IPPIS system in the Federal Civil Service that creates a seamless way of paying workers’ salaries and other benefits,” Ajayi stated.
He said the government ought to investigate the minimum wage issue that other state employees are enjoying.
“Our workers here are not benefiting from the minimum wage like other state workers. Workers of the state broadcast corporations should benefit from the minimum wage.
“In the last three or five months, they have not benefited a dime from the minimum wage, and this should not be the case,” he said.
According to Ajayi, the state government ought to be more accommodating to the media and take care of their requirements so that they may continue to spread its policies and initiatives.
He said he was hopeful the state executive council would deal with the problems.
Workers in the state-owned media have not been receiving the N85,000 minimum salary that the state government had approved, according to Mr. Ishola Adejumo, the Lagos State Chairman of RATTAWU, who stated that workers should receive their just compensation.
Adejumo said, “This is premised on the fact that the running of these stations is based on IGR (Internally Generated Revenue).
“This determines what they will do with salaries and other expenses.
“To us, this is no longer sustainable.
“For the past 12 years or thereabout, we have been demanding for migration of the workers here to Oracle database to guarantee regular payment of workers’ salaries and other benefits, along with their counterparts in the ministries; yet this has not been done.
“We are calling on the government and all the agencies concerned to migrate workers here to Oracle. Once they migrate them, we disperse and every problem will be solved.”
Oladejumo stated that “there is no retreat, no surrender” and that the unions would go on an indefinite strike if the government did not accede to the workers’ demands following the strike warning.