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Andrew Lo
KUCHING (May 3): Sarawak Bank Employees Union (SBEU) believes that a higher minimum wage will facilitate a high-income and high productivity workforce.
In stating this, its chief executive officer Andrew Lo said a higher minimum wage will also facilitate part-time employment for students to earn reasonable income and gain work experience.
“Employers have to invest in innovation and smarter human resources management as well as manpower planning instead of forever relying on low-skilled foreign workers.
“It will increase their competitiveness in a global economy,” he said in a statement today.
As such, he said the employers should be “much smarter”, be proactive and visionary instead of always relying on ‘we are not ready” excuse every time the minimum wage is increased.
“They should stop the same tired and boring fear mongering as they did in 2010 when the minimum wage was introduced and each time when the minimum wage is increased.
“They even made the now debunked claim that 300,000 businesses will go bankrupt if minimum is implemented.”
Lo said the employers also resorted to claim that the minimum wage would make no difference because the price of goods would increase.
“However, the minimum wage was implemented only in 2011. Before the minimum wage, price of goods also increased. In fact, the inflation pre-minimum wage was higher.
“It was the increase in cost of living caused by businesses increasing their prices that led to the implementation of the minimum wage and not the other way around,” he added.
On May 1, Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim had said the minimum wage issue will be discussed by the Cabinet next month in order to have the matter “resolved once and for all”.
In a speech at this year’s Labour Day celebration at Putrajaya International Convention Centre, Anwar had lamented the obstacles Putrajaya has been facing in trying to implement the RM1,500 minimum wage across the board.
Human Resources Minister V Sivakumar was also quoted as saying on May 1 that the government will identify a new method to set the minimum wage.
On March 19, 2022, then-prime minister Datuk Seri Ismail Sabri Yaakob announced that the minimum wage would be increased from RM1,200 to RM1,500 beginning from May 1, 2022. A temporary exemption until the end of last year was given to employers with less than five employees.
However, this category of employers was then allowed to delay the implementation a further six months to July 1.
Lo went on to say the additional minimum wage increase of RM300 translated to only additional 144 sen per hour.
“If they cannot afford 144 sen, they have no business to be in business,” he said.
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