CHAPTER ONE
1.0 INTRODUCTION
Human resources are the life wire of any given company without which organisations (Banks) will not be possible. In other words, for any company/organisation to achieve maximum services or even survive, it has to motivate members of its work force through wage rate. Accordingly, it is important that employers do these things, which they hope will satisfy the derives and desire of the employees in other to ultimately induce them to work harder for maximum services.
The Nigerian economy has passed through hard times lately as Neboh A. E (1996:1) wrote “the national economy has been battered by adverse balance of payment” problem, dividing oil revenue, unemployment, inflation and the depreciation of the value of the naira. This has led to a drastic decline in the fortunes of the companies.
Employees have also had a  grapple with low standard of living, increased taxation, and dividing purchasing power. This had forced them to perpetually seek new and better employment or look beyond their income, so we will find some of them selling various items ranging from textiles, jewelleries, whose, wires, etc. The both of them are fellow workers and visitors in the office.
Significantly the employees have learnt to battle with retrenchments, lay offs, non payment of salaries and benefit lack of promotion and difference in wage rate base on their qualification etc. This situation has made it difficult to harmonize the goals of the employers with these of the employees, since the success of the organisation can ensure that the employees achieves his goals of satisfying his needs. This is known to affect stage motivation and moral negatively.
Workers are always anxious to take jobs whereas they will be well paid and satisfied. The most prominent factors for job satisfaction is money and this is paid as wage rate.
1.1   BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
Wages are regular amount of money that is earned usually every work, for work or services   Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary (6th edition). In a nutshell, it is the reward for labour.
Differential wage rate is related to differences and the likes given to workers as a result of certain factors that influence a person’s perception of what his reward level should be include skills’ abilities, training and performance. A person who believes his job make a great demand of him expects more. Thus, people with high job inputs must receive more rewards than people with low job inputs or they’ll be dissatisfied C.C. Nwankwo. However, job satisfaction may mean different things to different workers. Some are satisfied with the job environment because it is very conducive; others are satisfied with the type of management and their techniques. Some others are satisfied with the nature of the job they do.
The basic requirement for job satisfaction may include comparatively higher pay, an equitable payment system, real opportunities for promotion, considerate and participative management – Michael Armstrong 2001 a satisfied worker is not necessarily a high producer and a high producer is no necessarily a satisfied worker. Money in the form of pay or some other sort of remuneration is the obvious extrinsic reward. Money cannot provide most people’s wants.
1.2   STATEMENT OF RESEARCH PROBLEM
Virtually speaking, the human resources in any human organisations have been considered as the most valuable assets which ultimately account for the overall organisational success and effectiveness that is why every organisation Will always strive to ensure a well packaged and highly motivated incentives including both extrinsic and intrinsic modes of motivation to constantly facilitate the desired work behaviour from their employees.
Meanwhile, the means to motivate workers to elicit the expected improved work behaviour have not been fully utilised. Although, most to ensure constant employee satisfaction, however the application of managers of various organisation have tried quite a number of methods to ensure constant employee satisfaction, however the application of these methods such as wage rate have raised so many questions, which consequently, open room for further research on their impact on worker’s attitude.
Thus, the wage rate that is satisfactory to one worker may not be satisfactory to another. So the use of differential wage rate, according to experts have been considered on the account of certain factors which include differences in skills, abilities, training and performance on the workers. Nonetheless, it is observed that workers take up jobs for various needs and which the use of differential remuneration may not be able to actualize them all. Hence, there is need to research into why workers still remain unsatisfied in spite of high wages or remuneration packages, and why do some members of the organisations feel they are still marginalized or not well remunerated, despite their high input into organisational success and goal achievement so the need for us to investigate the impact of differential wage rate on workers, most especially as applied to banking institutions has called for this research project with a view to explaining or providing possible answers to various questions regarding the subject matter.