National min wage unlikely soon

A national minimum wage structure in the country is unlikely to be in place in the near future as both the policymakers and representatives of industries were indifferent in this regard.
They argued against it as sector-wise minimum wage structures were there. So far, the minimum wage structures were applicable for 46 sectors in the country.
Officials, however, argued that it would be relevant to introduce the minimum wage when the country would become a higher middle-income country.
But labour rights activists said it was just setting a benchmark, not necessarily all the sectors would have to follow it.
The country last saw the national minimum wage in 2001. Since then, there was no minimum wage at the national level.
In fact, it was in 2001, when the government had announced a revised structure, fixing the monthly minimum wage at Tk 1,200 ($ 15.5) for small and medium industries, and Tk 1,350 ($ 17.5) for big industries.
Opposing the decision, Bangladesh Employers' Federation (BEF), the apex body for the country's formal sector employers, moved to the High Court.
The court had stayed the government decision due to procedural flaws in determining the wage. Since then, there was no move from the government to rectify the flaws and introduce a new wage structure.
Mr Mikail Shipar, Secretary to the Ministry of Labour and Employment, made it clear that the government was not thinking about introducing it now.
"The labour law asks for sector-wise minimum wage and we are working accordingly," he told the FE on Saturday. He said it was not covered under the existing legal framework.
"We can think of a national minimum wage structure when Bangladesh will graduate to the higher middle-income country status," he added.  
Mr Kazi Saifuddin Ahmed, the labour adviser to the BEF, said it was not a practical idea in the present day world when a very few countries were doing this.
"By setting a national minimum wage, we will rather create a problem for different sectors and the workers," he said.
According to the labour expert, different sectors have different job natures and their productivity and profitability were also different.  
"We can't put pharmaceutical sector and furniture sector at par," he said. "These two sectors deserve different kind of wage structure and also different minimum wage."
But, labour rights activists differed with such arguments. "The fundamental spirit of national minimum wage is to set a minimum or floor benchmark for all the sectors," said Mr Syed Abdus Sultan, executive director of the Bangladesh Institute of Labour Studies (BILS).
"It doesn't mean that all sectors have to follow the same level of minimum wage, but that no sector can set lowest wage for the labours below the national level," he added.
Moreover, the sector-wise wage structure was not also very effective in many cases due to lack of timely revision and adjustment.
For instance, the government revised the wage structure for the readymade garment industry workers in 2013 after a series of protests and violence.   
Again, for the last six months, the workers were demanding revision of the minimum wage while the factory owners went tough on them with the help of the law enforcing agencies.
Mr Sultan also argued that the national minimum wage actually provided protection for the workers and labours engaged in all the sectors, especially in the informal sectors of the economy.
Currently, the informal sector is generating more jobs than the formal ones.
According to the labour force survey by the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS), in 2013, the formal sectors employed only 7.3 million people in the country while the number was 50.8 million in the informal sectors. Updated full data for the next year is yet to be available.
BBS latest statistics, however, showed that there were 2.6 million people remained unemployed out of the country's total labour force of 62.10 million as of June 2016.
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