Labour Day march to seek a minimum wage
The May 1 committee comprising NGOs, civil society and students’ movements will celebrate this year’s International Labour Day with a march aimed at pressuring the government to enact the Minimum Wage Act.
The May 1 committee comprising NGOs, civil society and students’ movements will celebrate this year’s International Labour Day with a march aimed at pressuring the government to enact the Minimum Wage Act.
The theme for the Labour Day celebration this year will be Harga barang naik! Gaji bila lagi? (After price hikes, what about pay rise?).
“This represents the workers’ struggles with bosses who don’t want to see minimum wage implemented,” said committee spokesperson S Arutchelvam (right), who is also PSM secretary-general, at the committee’s press conference in Kuala Lumpur today.
Asked why he thinks employers have opposed the enactment of such a law, he said that it was all a question of money.
“Employers are only profit-oriented. Their main motive is profit and they hold no loyalty to the country.”
Arutchelvam said the employers’ argument had always been that if wages were increased, then the companies would leave the country.
“This is how they blackmail the government,” Arutchelvam added.
The PSM leader said it was time the government picked between the workers in their millions, or the profit-seeking corporations.
‘People first, but profit more important’
He cited the ever-widening income gap in Malaysia. which he said was now the highest in Southeast Asia, surpassing even neighbouring Thailand and Indonesia, as a reason to raise wages, especially with the ever-increasing hikes in prices of essential goods.
Price hikes, he said, were implemented speedily and without consultation with the rakyat, while wage increases were ‘studied’ to death and initiatives such as the Minimum Wage Act dragged at a snail’s pace at the behest of profit-seeking employers.
“People first, but profit is more important,” chimed Arutchelvam, aping Premier Najib Abdul Razak’s 1Malaysia slogan of “People first, performance now”.
Some 500 people are expected to join in the march from Chow Kit to Dataran Merdeka, where a rally is planned, and a declaration endorsed by more than 60 groups state their demands from the government will be read out.
According to Andika Abdul Wahab (left), who represented Suaram at the press conference, the police have been notified about the march and rally.
Arutchelvam added that they do not expect police to object or obstruct their peaceful march and rally, based on previous experience. They have also informed Human Rights Council (Suhakam), which will monitor the event.
Also present at the press conference were Solidariti Mahasiswa Malaysia (SMM) secretary Izzudin Hilmi Mohd Zaini and representatives from civil society group Jerit and the Women’s Aid Organisation (WAO).
Sore point
The low wage received by Malaysian workers has been a sore point for labour organisations, with the government for the most part turning a deaf ear to their pleas, citing the need to let “market forces” control wage levels.
However, the government recently admitted that market forces alone cannot guarantee reasonable wages, with 40 percent of Malaysians living on a monthly salary of less than RM700, well below the poverty line.
This realisation led to the idea to enact a minimum wage policy. The first group to benefit from this was supposed to be security guards.
But the move received stiff resistance from employers, whose unified opposition stymied efforts to implement the minimum wage for security guarand and any government bid to widen the policy by codifying a Minimum Wage Act.
