Malaysia is one of Asia's biggest employers of foreign labour. But recently, cases of deaths, abuse and forced labour have come to light. What is going on? Who is protecting these migrant workers?
Today for every RM1 earned in the economy, a worker’s share in Malaysia is a meagre 34sen, revealed the Socioeconomic Interest Group, Blindspot, co-founder Azlan Awang speaking at the MTUC’s +50 USD campaign launching.
However, he revealed that in developed countries such as Sweden, the workers’ share stood at 70 cents which was due to high unionization ratio of up to 70% which facilitated good political economies.
Similarly, in countries where workers enjoy higher ratio of the wage share also have good political economies.
“Our political economy has dictated this situation where the wage share of the economy is a mere 35%”, he said.
Looking forward, the Malaysian government’s forecast of wage share according the RMK11 is set at 40% of the corporate earnings to be achieved by 2020. However, the current wage share growth of 11.1% over a period five years does not in any event reflect the possibility of achieving the RMK11 target.
The government’s goal in achieving a minimum wage of RM3,500 per month by the year 2020 is the forecast in the RMK11 but to achieve this target, the annual wage growth has to accelerate at a rate of 8% and thus the minimum wage today, has to be not less than RM1,800 per month together with proportionate additions for annual incremental credit.
This minimum wage increase of RM800 is in line with the +50USD per week, campaigned by the MTUC.
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