Nobody is forbidden from setting up a business.

If you feel underpaid, set up a business and change the narrative.

Officialgarri:
This is no time to talk about the shortcomings or rather, incompetency of the Ministry of Labour.

I glanced through the recent version of Nigeria Labour law —Labour Act 2004, and I can agree it's a shallow draft that didn't know of its importance.

If I were to be bias, I would compare the Labour Act 2004 to the "Animal farm" laws that was tweaked to suit the farm leaders —Napoleon and the other pigs.

Without much ado, to avoid Under payment, I'm of the opinion that Employee's wages (instead being set by capitalist employers) — should be determined by the company's annual income and the Nigerian Labour body should follow up strictly on its compliance.
It is however left to the Employer's discretion to raise the wages higher than the set minimum wage.

Income during the period when the company makes profit or loss ?

What if at any point the company makes loss ,should wages be renegotiated downward visavis

laplace12:
Nobody is forbidden from setting up a business.

If you feel underpaid, set up a business and change the narrative.

If only some of you understand the sacrifices employers make to keep the company running, you won't be saying these.

This is like saying if you can't pay your employees, close down your business.

Employers need to be reasonable in this Nigeria.

If you leave wages at he discretion of the employer, some employer prefer they pay you little or nothing at all. No be this useless country some people dey collect 10 as monthly salary.

AK481:

Income during the period when the company makes profit or loss ?

What if at any point the company makes loss ,should wages be renegotiated downward visavis

During the pandemic. Professional players took wage cut. Some were sacked, many weren't payed. Which is quite understandable to some extent.

What of when a certain company make excess of their normal profit, should they renegotiate upward?

Officialgarri:
This is no time to talk about the shortcomings or rather, incompetency of the Ministry of Labour.

I glanced through the recent version of Nigeria Labour law —Labour Act 2004, and I can agree it's a shallow draft that didn't know of its importance.

If I were to be bias, I would compare the Labour Act 2004 to the "Animal farm" laws that was tweaked to suit the farm leaders —Napoleon and the other pigs.

Without much ado, to avoid Under payment, I'm of the opinion that Employee's wages (instead being set by capitalist employers) — should be determined by the company's annual income and the Nigerian Labour body should follow up strictly on its compliance.
It is however left to the Employer's discretion to raise the wages higher than the set minimum wage.

This is a course of its own "LABOUR ECONOMY", 4 years degree course.

Who is Adam Smith?

capitalism creates wealth.

by underpaying the employee.

Karleb:


This is like saying if you can't pay your employees, close down your business.

Employers need to be reasonable in this Nigeria.

You will definitely close down if you can't pay employees. There's no option to that.

Free market does not exist in reality(simple economics). You can not leave price of goods and commodities to market forces. Governments have to constantly intervene with right policy instruments.

efficiencie:


...then instead of recruiting people employers will basically go capital intensive and deploy the use of automation to displace labor...when that happens you will be back to square one, capitalists get richer and employees remain unemployed in their sapa republic! The free market is best mechanism for price/wage determination unless you want to live and die as an employee. Any attempt to fix prices/wages (as obtainable in a command economy) will ultimately hurt the very same people you claim to protect!

Karleb:
There should be a body to look into this.

There is a school in my community, the least you pay per term is N150k but their entry level payment is N49k.

We have more than one side to every arguement.
You are talking from an Employee's point of view.
When you become an Employer of Labour, u definitely see things differently.

You see what we call BUSINESS , Isn't a child's play and when you are down, no one will recue you .People who can't help you will be ready to buy your company immediately.

Most Employees will calculate the company's income without calculating the cost of running the business daily.

Let me give you little analysis from the figure u dropped. 150k as school fees and a teacher earns 49k monthly. It means a student fees has been used to settle a teacher for the term. Imagine having 10 staffs.
Now the number of students must be above 40 for such school to think of a reasonable profit. U pay for electricity, advertisment, levy, renovations, expansion, loans repayment, examinations etc.
If the owner isnt careful, after paying all these bills, he wont be earning up to 120k as monthly salary. (This is someone who build, breath , think and shoulder the risk and responsibility of the business)

.
Please I want to know how to stop Nairaland from sending me Emails Every Single Time I logged in.
I mean My Mail box is full with Nairaland Mails.
Please Help!

P.S I use my Phone's browser to surf Naira land

Yes. In the sense that every company has a wage structure. This structure has to be adhered to irrespective of who is being employed otherwise it creates bad blood in the system. Richer companies that are in a viable sector can pay more than other companies in less viable sector. One has to adjust to the salary scale of employer or leave the job. After all employer cannot steal to pay salary

Officialgarri:
This is no time to talk about the shortcomings or rather, incompetency of the Ministry of Labour.

I glanced through the recent version of Nigeria Labour law —Labour Act 2004, and I can agree it's a shallow draft that didn't know of its importance.

If I were to be bias, I would compare the Labour Act 2004 to the "Animal farm" laws that was tweaked to suit the farm leaders —Napoleon and the other pigs.

Without much ado, to avoid Under payment, I'm of the opinion that Employee's wages (instead being set by capitalist employers) — should be determined by the company's annual income and the Nigerian Labour body should follow up strictly on its compliance.
It is however left to the Employer's discretion to raise the wages higher than the set minimum wage.

What if the company makes a loss or consistent losses across many years?

In a capitalist economy, you can’t regulate salaries

Officialgarri:
This is no time to talk about the shortcomings or rather, incompetency of the Ministry of Labour.

I glanced through the recent version of Nigeria Labour law —Labour Act 2004, and I can agree it's a shallow draft that didn't know of its importance.

If I were to be bias, I would compare the Labour Act 2004 to the "Animal farm" laws that was tweaked to suit the farm leaders —Napoleon and the other pigs.

Without much ado, to avoid Under payment, I'm of the opinion that Employee's wages (instead being set by capitalist employers) — should be determined by the company's annual income and the Nigerian Labour body should follow up strictly on its compliance.
It is however left to the Employer's discretion to raise the wages higher than the set minimum wage.

Hahahaha i laugh at this your thought line.

To be determined by a company's annual income

Immediately you do that, companies will begin to under declare their income, who then will be the loser, tax authorities, employees etc

It's better the way it is now.

efficiencie:


...then instead of recruiting people employers will basically go capital intensive and deploy the use of automation to displace labor...when that happens you will be back to square one, capitalists get richer and employees remain unemployed in their sapa republic! The free market is best mechanism for price/wage determination unless you want to live and die as an employee. Any attempt to fix prices/wages (as obtainable in a command economy) will ultimately hurt the very same people you claim to protect!

A fixed price on Labour in a command economy may adversely affect qualified Labour too as an unintended consequence.

All over the world, employee wages is set by forces demand and supply. Even entry level job wages is on the rise now due to shortage of employees. MacDonald now pays $11hr which was unheard of before. Government can only set minimum wages and the rest is control my market forces and negotiation between employer and employee.

Well-spoken. I used to see people think this way, and I too wonder why some companies take certain decisions, like 20% cut off total sale for a freelancer, for instance. Not until I started my own business. Running a business isn't easy. Payment processor will take their cut, banks, cost of running the business to scale it, buying necessary tools, and upon that, you pay tax...almost left with nothing.

That's why 90% of startups fail in their first year.

Beedude:

We have more than one side to every arguement.
You are talking from an Employee's point of view.
When you become an Employer of Labour, u definitely see things differently.

You see what will call BUSINESS , Isn't a child's play and when you are down, no one will recue you .People who can't help you will be ready to buy your company immediately.

Most Employees will calculate the company's income without calculating the cost of running the business daily.

Let me give you little analysis from the figure u dropped. 150k as school fees and a teacher earns 49k monthly. It means a student fees has been used to settle a teacher for the term. Imagine having 10 staffs.
Now the number of students must be above 40 for such school to think of a reasonable profit. U pay for electricity, advertisment, levy, renovations, expansion, loans repayment, examinations etc.
If the owner isnt careful, after paying all these bills, he wont be earning up to 120k as monthly salary. (This is someone who build, breath , think and shoulder the risk and responsibility of the business)

Beedude:

We have more than one side to every arguement.
You are talking from an Employee's point of view.
When you become an Employer of Labour, u definitely see things differently.

You see what will call BUSINESS , Isn't a child's play and when you are down, no one will recue you .People who can't help you will be ready to buy your company immediately.

Most Employees will calculate the company's income without calculating the cost of running the business daily.

Let me give you little analysis from the figure u dropped. 150k as school fees and a teacher earns 49k monthly. It means a student fees has been used to settle a teacher for the term. Imagine having 10 staffs.
Now the number of students must be above 40 for such school to think of a reasonable profit. U pay for electricity, advertisment, levy, renovations, expansion, loans repayment, examinations etc.
If the owner isnt careful, after paying all these bills, he wont be earning up to 120k as monthly salary. (This is someone who build, breath , think and shoulder the risk and responsibility of the business)

This school I'm taking about, for S S S 3 alone, they have 150 students, these senior students pay at least N300k based on Jamb, WAEC and NECO charges.

The school's population is atleast 1,000 for the secondary alone.

The owner goes around, building hotels, building other schools and paying N49 at entry level. That's too poor.

You people should stop saying the "you'd see things differently when you become employer" line.

A lot of employer in Nigeria rip off their employee.

Embell:
Free market does not exist in reality(simple economics). You can not leave price of goods and commodities to market forces. Governments have to constantly intervene with right policy instruments.

Only approximations of market structures exist. There are hardly any pure forms of market structures but there are economies that lean mostly towards the free market and other that lean mostly to the command economy. That said, it is utterly wrong for you to say you cannot leave the price of commodities to the market forces because so far, in both theory and practice, the market forces are the most efficient means of allocating resources. The government's intervention is only required when markets fail as an equilibrating mechanism, e.g when the aggregate demand isn't changing fast enough to correct imbalances or when common pool problems or externalities are generated...hence it is also wrong in both theory and policy circles to say the government must constantly intervene in the economy. The government is a good regulator but very terrible allocating/coordinating mechanism! For example look at Biden. He gave unemployment benefits that were much higher than what employers could pay to make people return to work. This policy aims at boosting welfare and making employers raise wages but the fools did not realise that not all businesses are like Amazon that can simply raise wages to entice people to return to work. Many of the affected businesses are small businesses and they cannot afford to raise wages. The spillover effect of this dumb policy would be the reduction in aggregate supply, inflationary trends, reallocation of resources from the real to financial sector and the overall decline in welfare. Showing that the purpose of the Biden policy will ultimately be defeated.

The employer is the job creator, he takes the risk and you the employee are just replacable tools for production.

If the ministry of labour has to set employee salaries Then that means, all employers will form a union to set labour price of which the ministry of labour will have to agree or else they stop employing

wellmax:




Hahahaha i laugh at this your thought line.

To be determined by a company's annual income

Immediately you do that, companies will begin to under declare their income, who then will be the loser, tax authorities, employees etc

It's better the way it is now.

But there's ministry of Labour for a reason and there exists Auditors for a reason.

They study every inflow and outflow of your company's finance over the year. So, under declaring their inflow is only something they can get away with only when they decide to pay bribe

thebosstrevor1:
Then that means, all employers will form a union to set labour price of which the ministry of labour have to agree or else they stop employing

They stop employing, then they will shut down. If they can run the company without employees, then they won't carry out recruitments in the first instance.

Officialgarri:

But there's ministry of Labour for a reason and there exists Auditors for a reason.

They study every inflow and outflow of your company's finance over the year. So, under declaring their inflow is only something they can get away with only when they decide to pay bribe

The ministry of labour isn't an auditing firm, even the tax collector collect tax on what the employer shows him.

Officialgarri:


Without much ado, to avoid Under payment, I'm of the opinion that Employee's wages (instead being set by capitalist employers) — should be determined by the company's annual income and the Nigerian Labour body should follow up strictly on its compliance.

In business ... it usually takes at least two years for a company to get a grip on its profit and loss. I hear your proposal .... it's a business one and in business belief doesn't hold ... you must have answers. I am starting a business .... a bakery .. how do I decide how much to pay my 5 employees? .. 1 chief Baker... 4 helpers?
Under your proposal ... with no minimum wage guidelines ... I can pay whatever I like since there is no annual income as yet. How different will this be than the present situation where .... with the lack of enforcement of minimum wage and labour laws.... employers pay whatever they like? How would your proposal make it better for employees?

If in 2019 ... Company A had an annual income of N100m .... according to your proposal ... will this determine the wages to be paid in 2020?... or it will be retroactive ... wages that should've been paid in 2019? How will this work?

The mike is yours ... defend your proposal.

We are talking about macroeconomics here (I'm glad you rightly mentioned aggregate demand in your comment). You cannot rely on market forces to achieve goals of macroeconomics. Go back to your literatures, free market economy* (without any intervention) does not exist in reality in any economy. It's a way of explaining something economics concepts. Government must constantly intervene through policies.

efficiencie:


Only approximations of market structures exist. There are hardly any pure forms of market structures but there are economies that lean mostly towards the free market and other that lean mostly to the command economy. That said, it is utterly wrong for you to say you cannot leave the price of commodities to the market forces because so far, in both theory and practice, the market forces are the most efficient means of allocating resources. The government's intervention is only required when markets fail as an equilibrating mechanism, e.g when the aggregate demand isn't changing fast enough to correct imbalances or when common pool problems or externalities are generated...hence it is also wrong in both theory and policy circles to say the government must constantly intervene in the economy. The government is a good regulator but very terrible allocating/coordinating mechanism!

Officialgarri:

There's only a thin line between Slavery and Employee.

Your employees are the one building the company, generating income. Would it be fair to make 20 billion for your company and you are paid only 0.0001 percent? Obviously, the Employee treatment has been crossed into slavery.

There's a ministry that ought to cater for treatment of staff, but they seem to be looking elsewhere
A valid point here. But what about a system where every registered company is insured by the Government —state or federal government —depending on the size and nature of the business.
And then if the company runs at loss and can't keep up with a minimum wage, the Government would step in for the period to complete the payments.

I think this is an issue to be raised by the senate.

Valid points you've made but we have the framework for such to be put in place, if yes, what about the government, are they ready.

I guess, we all know the answer..

Officialgarri:

They stop employing, then they will shut down. If they can run the company without employees, then they won't carry out recruitments in the first instance.

If the union of employers shut down employment and production that means employee will go hungry and out of job, then the ministry of labour will have to bring the union of employers to the table and agree to their salary structure of which, it will also be a disadvantage to the employees.

Originalsly:


In business ... it usually takes at least two years for a company to get a grip on its profit and loss. I hear your proposal .... it's a business one and in business belief doesn't hold ... you must have answers. I am starting a business .... a bakery .. how do I decide how much to pay my 5 employees? .. 1 chief Baker... 4 helpers?
Under your proposal ... with no minimum wage guidelines ... I can pay whatever I like since there is no annual income as yet. How different will this be than the present situation where .... with the lack of enforcement of minimum wage and labour laws.... employers pay whatever they like? How would your proposal make it better for employees?

If in 2019 ... Company A had an annual income of N100m .... according to your proposal ... will this determine the wages to be paid in 2020?... or it will be retroactive ... wages that should've been paid in 2019? How will this work?

The mike is yours ... defend your proposal.

I believe there's something called "Annual turnover" which shows your yearly profit.

Even if this proposal doesn't apply in the first year of a business, it should be applicable in about the second or third year.

Embell:
We are talking about macroeconomics here (I'm glad you rightly mentioned aggregate demand in your comment). You cannot rely on market forces to achieve goals of macroeconomics. Go back to your literatures, free market does not exist in any economy. It's a way of explaining something economics concepts. Government must constantly intervene through policies.

Your macroeconomics is dead if it has no micro foundations. Any economist worth his salt should know this. Dynamic stochastic general equilibrium models used to make macroeconomic forecasts are macro models that are based on microeconomic assumptions. Are you also conversant with representative agent models? If yes, then you should no that the era of Keynesian models without micro foundations is long gone. Again I say to you that you are wrong to say government must CONSTANLTY intervene in the economy. It is so wrong that even in China, led by a communist party, they know it is wrong. The government only intervenes when it is needed and not CONSTANTLY. I even provided you with instances where government intervention is needed. You should study recent literature to confirm this.

Officialgarri:

I believe there's something called "Annual turnover" which shows your yearly profit.

Even if this proposal doesn't apply in the first year of a business, it should be applicable in about the second or third year.

The employees are not the one taking the risk, the bank loans and all other expenses, employers provide the tools for production and employees use them, if the company makes 100 million, why should I pay employees a substantial amount of my profit when I provided everything they needed to make the company successful