Global stocks sank Wednesday after US President Donald Trump said he was not satisfied with talks that are aimed at averting a trade war with China. Equities were also dented by poor eurozone economic data, and as Trump cast doubt on a planned summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. “Trump (is) continuing to drive uncertainty over global trade,” said analyst Joshua Mahony at trading firm IG. “European markets are following their Asian counterparts lower, as a pessimistic tone from Trump is compounded by downbeat economic data,” he added. Markets had surged Monday after US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Chinese Vice Premier Liu He said they had agreed to pull back from imposing threatened tariffs on billions of dollars of goods, and continue talks on a variety of trade issues. However, Trump has declared that he was “not satisfied” with the status of the talks, fuelling worries that the world’s top two economies could still slug out an economically pain...
Labour leaders on Sunday expressed optimism that the Federal Government would give workers a living wage.
President Muhammdu Buhari on Thursday approved the appointment of a 30-member tripartite National Minimum Wage Committee for the negotiation of a new National Minimum Wage.
The labour leaders, who are members of the committee, spoke to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Lagos ahead of the committee inauguration scheduled for Monday in Abuja.
The committee is made up of persons from the public sector (federal and state governments) and the private sector (members of the Nigeria Employers’ Consultative Association (NECA)
Mr Ayuba Wabba, President of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) told NAN that“our expectation is that the demand of Labour will be met.
“We will discuss with an open mind to ensure that we achieve our aims and objectives,’’ Wabba said.
He said that the meeting with the tripartite committee would be a social dialogue and collective bargaining discussion.
According to him, the inauguration is long overdue and effort would be made to fast track negotiations to ensure that workers and pensioners get their accrued benefits.
He said that labour would discuss issues relating to rate of Naira because the present exchange rate had increased from the time N56,000 was being proposed by labour.
Mr Peter Ozo-Eson, NLC General Secretary, also said that the committee would discuss many issues affecting the minimum wage and the way forward.
According to Ozo-Eson, it is over two years since the organised labour proposed N56,000 as minimum wage to the government; and so will consider a number of socio-economic indices to take its action.
He said that the organised labour was looking forward to the inauguration because the committee was made up of a tripartite group that would discuss issues affecting the Nigerian workers.
“We look forward to the inauguration which I believe will discuss the facts and economic realities when it starts the negotiation.”

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