A permanent wage commission urgently necessary to fix national minimum wages
May Day was observed Monday, but this year, when the food inflation has jumped up unprecedentedly within just a few months in the wake of the Ukraine-Russia war as well as the lingering impact of Covid-19 pandemic, the lives of workers in Bangladesh have become more vulnerable than at any other time.
What they get as their wages do not ensure for them nothing beyond food now; for many, even managing this food has become impossible. And the price of everything is rising; there is no brake on this as the government is hiking the electricity price quite often. In this year, the government has hiked the electricity price three times and, reportedly, another hike will be made by June.
Compared to inflation, the earnings of people, who are placed in the lower rung of society, especially the workers, is not rising. For them, life has become a hard battle for survival. Not only are workers’ wages not increasing, workers who get their wages monthly suffer discriminatory wages due to the lack of a national minimum wage standard.
Trade union leaders and labour rights advocates reportedly said that the prevailing wage-setting system in the country is discriminatory and against the interest of workers which is right. In Bangladesh, the demand of an eight-hour workday with fair wages still has not materialised. Hence the necessity of forming a ‘permanent wage board’ and national minimum wages for the workers to eliminate wage discrimination in a total of country’s 44 different industrial sectors where wages for workers are set under a ‘minimum wage board’ for each sector.
The minimum monthly wage in most sectors ranges from Tk 792 to Tk 16,000, a national daily on May Day reported mentioning that the minimum monthly wage for petrol pump workers was set at Tk 792 in 1987 and no new wage has been fixed since then though workers now get higher than the amount determined in 1987. But there should have been a new wage for the workers to protect their interest.
The provision to review minimum wages in every five years as stipulated in the Labour Act is followed by only 20 sectors for more than five years. The minimum wage of other sectors is not reviewed. This is indeed discriminatory. Workers in the readymade garment sector get Tk 8,000 as the minimum wage but workers in many other sectors get Tk 4,500-Tk 6,000 as the lowest wage.
Therefore, society has to get rid of this discrimination. For protecting the workers in all sectors a permanent wage commission and national minimum wages have now become urgent. A social system in which poor people are getting poorer and the rich people getting richer cannot ensure for us lasting peace.
