No national minimum wage

Talha Bin Habib | Published: May 01, 2016 00:00:00 | Updated: February 01, 2018 00:00:00

A national minimum wage structure still eludes Bangladesh's 60-million-strong workforce when the country observes the International Workers' Day or May Day today with the ritualistic vow to protect labour rights.   
The government announced monthly minimum national wage for small and medium industries way back in 2001. But the process has been blocked for one and a half decades due to legal complexity.
Labour rights activists suggested drafting 'guidelines' for national minimum wage so that the labourers are not deprived of their basic right.
On the other hand, sources in the Ministry of Labour (MoL) told the FE that the country does not need a 'national wage structure' since there is a committee with the responsibility to review the salary structure of the workers every five years.
"We have a committee that readjusts salaries of workers of different sectors after every five years," secretary of the MoL Mikail Shipar told the FE Saturday.
He thinks there is no need for a uniform or national minimum wage structure for workers as the committee is enough to look into discrimination regarding minimum salaries of the workers.      
The labour secretary said there are 42 industrial sectors in the country where minimum salaries are not the same due mainly to different nature of jobs and duration of working hours and income.
But the labour rights activists wouldn't take his point-they said absence of national wage structure offers a scope for practicing discrimination about paying minimum salary to the workers.
"There should be a uniform national minimum wage structure for the workers of different sectors for ensuring their welfare," general secretary of Jatiya Sramik League Serajul Islam told the FE on the eve of the labour solidarity day.
Industry owners stood opposed to national minimum wage structure.   
Bangladesh Employers Federation, the apex body of country's formal-sector employers, moved the High Court challenging the validity of national minimum wage in 2001.
The court stayed the government decision on grounds of procedural deficiencies to determine national minimum wages.
Since then, there has been no move from the government to rectify the procedural flaws and introduce new national minimum wage scale.
The employers argued that a national minimum wage would create a legal binding for the country's largely disorganised informal sector and spark labour unrest as most of the informal-sector businesses and industries have not the capacity to follow such wage structure.
According to the Labour Force Survey 2013, prepared by the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics, only 7.3 million workers are in formal sector while the size of workforce in the informal sector stood at 50.8 million.
Employers also argued that a minimum national wage might encourage many strong industrial sectors to pay higher sector-based minimum wage and create further tension between owners and workers.
Against this backdrop, owners and employers prefer sector-based minimum wage and government also had predilection towards their preference.
In this connection, the government formed minimum wage board in 2004 to determine lowest or minimum wage for different sectors. As of 2016, minimum wages for 42 sectors, including readymade garments (RMG), have been fixed by the board.  
Bangladesh Institute of Labour Studies (BILS) says workers of many sectors are being deprived due to the absence of national minimum wage structure.
"There should be a minimum national wage structure in the interest of the workers and country's development growth," assistant executive director of BILS Syed Sultan Uddin Ahmed told the FE on the day.   
talhabinhabib@yahoo.com