Wage council for workers formed
Star Online
PUTRAJAYA: A wage council has been set up to look into the low salaries of workers from the electronics and textile sectors.
“The wage council will conduct a nationwide inquiry by interviewing workers in these two industries and come up with recommendations on improving their wages,” said Human Resources Minister Datuk Dr S. Subramaniam.
He said the ministry had been receiving complaints that workers in the two sectors “consistently received low wages.”
“We hope the wage council will be able to finish its work by the end of next year,” he told reporters after receiving a memorandum on minimum wage from MTUC at his office yesterday. The MTUC’s memoramdum was submitted in conjunction with World Day for Decent Work yesterday.
Dr Subramaniam said several commission of inquiries and wage councils had been formed previously to look into minimum wages of security guards, clinic assistants, hotel and catering staff and general workers from small holdings.
The wage council on security guards recently approved a minimum wage for private security guards of between RM250 and RM700 to help ease their burden.
Subramaniam said while the Government did not agree on the implementation of a minimum wage scheme for all workers, it recognised that it was necessary to offer decent salaries as the country was losing its skilled employees to its competitors.
“I have requested the Malaysian Employers’ Federation to come up with guidelines on what is the appropriate salary for workers in the different areas in the private sector and how to implement them,” he said, adding that the ministry would continue to hold dialogues with both employers and workers from sectors not covered by the wage councils.
MTUC president Syed Shahir Syed Mohamud said the union would continue to pressure the Government to compel employers to pay a monthly minimum wage of RM900 for all workers despite the setting up of wage councils.
