Minimum wage increase insignificant

The new minimum daily wage increases expected to come into force on Jan 1 are no more than chicken feed and can hardly be considered a New Year's gift for the workers, as suggested. They deserve much better treatment.

The Wage Committee will put its recommendations for new minimum rates for the whole country to the cabinet on Tuesday.

If approved, this would mean an increase of a minimum of one baht a day in seven provinces, up to a maximum of eight baht per day to be enforced in Ayutthaya. The rates in Bangkok and 10 other provinces would go up by three baht with the new daily wage in Bangkok set at 206 baht.

The seven provinces looking at a one baht raise are Nan, Phayao, Phrae, Phitsanulok, Uttradit, Phichit and Loei.

Five provinces will have their rates frozen and workers there get no increase at all despite inflation -- Mae Hong Son, Sukhothai, Chiang Rai, Petchabun and Uthai Thani. It is beyond comprehension why the Wage Committee has decided to exclude these five provinces from the increases. Workers in these provinces have to pay as much for the same consumer products as their fellow workers elsewhere, and sometimes even more because they have to bear the higher transport charged for products delivered to the provinces.

Wilaiwan sae Tia, chair of the Thai Labour Reconciliation Committee, has questioned the Wage Committee’s logic in applying different wage rates instead of one standard minimum wage rate for the entire country. She also suggests that the provinces which are excluded from the pay adjustment are those where most labourers are migrants from neighbouring countries and, therefore, they should be discriminateld against. Or, perhaps, the workers there do not have bargaining power.

The old assumption that the cost of living in the rural provinces is lower than in Bangkok, which has been used all along by the Wage Committee to justify the different minimum wage rates, is outdated and does not reflect the reality.

Although workers in rural areas may pay less for rent, they pay more for the same consumer products, fuel costs, transport and electricity charges. The cost of living for workers in the rural provinces may be a bit lower than that of their fellow workers in Bangkok, but the gap in the minimum wage rates is so wide that upcountry workers are unfairly paid. The gap should, at the very least, be substantially narrowed if a single minimum wage rate cannot be applied nationwide.

While the government may hail the new minimum wage rates as a New Year’s gift, for the workers n general, the minimum increase, just 1.5 percent in the case of Bangkok or 4.6 percent rise from 173 to 181 baht in the case of Ayutthaya, will hardly help them make ends meet or improve their lives.

Most will remain poor and in debt - either to the bankers or, more likely, to the extortion of loan sharks.