FTI Protest 400 Baht Minimum Wage Policy.
18-7-2019– FTI protest 400 Baht minimum wage policy. Insist that the present Labor Wage is suitable for majority. Propose Government to put more support to social security welfare fund.
Refer to minimum wage policy of PPRP (Palungpracharat Party) that has campaigned to raise the minimum wage to 400 Baht/day nationwide before the general election to win popularity vote.
Today is the third official day of the new government. Chairman of Federal of Thailand Industry (FTI) decided to announce its standing point of the minimum wage.
Mr.Suphan Mongkonsuthee FTI chairman disclosed that to adjust minimum wage to 400 Baht/day nationwide might make direct impact to SMEs enterprises can’t handle the labor cost and must be liquidated. The right adjustment of minimum wage must pass the tri-party committee’s agreement and the minimum wage in each area are difference, can’t be set at the same rate nationwide.
Thailand’s present labor situation as of June 2019, according to D.E. Ministry, National Statistic Office found 38.82 million people are in labor age, comprised of 38.38 employed labor, 3.63 unemployed 363,000 people and 83,000 people waiting for seasonal work. The amount of employed labor was 10,000 people more than the same period last year’s. The unemployed labor was 63,000 people more than the same period last year’s.
While there were 3,268,285 million permitted alienate workers nationwide in June 2019, comprised of 2.98 million general workers and 179,000 skilled labor, 241 lifelong labor, 62,000 minority workers and 43,300 seasonal workers. The group that gain the most benefit is the alienate worker who transfer back the money to their country but the money can’t flow into Thailand’s economic system.
FTI considered the existing average labor rate at 325 baht/day is already appropriate and should pushing the Pay by Skill policy, support to pay the wage in according to skills that each industry in each province can pay difference wage according to market mechanism, the FTI didn’t agree to promptly adjust the wage nationwide in the same time, said Mr.Suphan.
Mr.SuChat Vice Chairman of FTI and Labor section chairman added the three principle that FTI propose for the wage policy as follow;
1) Wage adjustment must relevant to increasing productivity and consistent to the labor protection law.
2) Should set the labor productivity and Labor development as to be National Agenda and should promote Re Skill and Up Skill by government incentive according to labor market.
3) Propose government to set the system of RE-Employment for senior citizen, set up the incentive measure to pull in more enterprises into the system by reforming national wage system, in order to be the mechanism to raise the productivity by promoting the flexible employment and making expense deductible as the true wage.
Should study the labor demand and the necessary to employ others national labor to replace the three nations labor (Cambodia, Lao and Myanmar) and promote the labor outside the system to enter into the labor system and set up the labor big data system of Labor Ministry.
FTI chairman also disclosed that in order to give more benefit to labor FTI will propose government to pay social security fund contribution for all labor by increasing the government contribution rate from 2.75% to 7.75% for each labor’s security account,
in order for employee to have more money to purchase, as they won’t have to pay 5% of their salary contributing to their social security fund each month, while the employer remain paying 5% of salary for each employer every month into their social security fund account.
