By Stephanie Jacob
A meeting yesterday between members of nine business associations and the National Wages Consultative Council ended abruptly and unpleasantly after the representatives of the associations walked out due to what they called “totally uncultured and barbaric” behaviour from the council members.
“We thought that we were being invited for a dialog on how we can come to an amicable solution on the minimum wage for foreign workers,” said Sai Chin Hock, the managing director of Perfect Food who attended the meeting.
Instead, he accused the Council of being disrespectful and high handed. He said that once the meeting started, it felt as if the council had called them in to force them to agree with the disputed policies via putting words in their mouths and other unfair tactics.
This apparently led to the business associations deciding to walk out.
Sai says that as they were walking out, yells of “get out” were directed to them by representatives of the council. However, he said he could not identify exactly who had yelled for them to get out.
The meeting had been at the invitation of the Council to discuss how the issue of the minimum wage policy of RM900 for foreign workers might be resolved. The policy has come under fire from businesses who do not believe the proposal is practical or sustainable and are asking for it to be deferred.
Sai said that while business owners had accepted the proposal for a minimum wage of RM900 for local workers, they did not agree with proposals for a similar minimum wage to be implemented for foreign workers.
He explained that through existing tripartite agreements between businesses, workers and the various embassies, foreign workers already have a take home pay of RM800 comprising of basic pay and other allowances. In fact he says with overtime, the workers usually take home RM1000 or more.
He emphasised that businesses could simply not sustain a wage policy that mandated a basic pay of RM900. He added business owners did not believe that this was good for the nation either because unlike local workers who would spend the money in Malaysia – foreign workers would be sending most of the money back to their home countries.
According to Sai, “there was a feeling that the council may be misleading the Human Resource Minister.” He questioned the motives and the makeup of the council saying that it did not adequately represent the business community.
“Of course, MTUC (Malaysian Trades Union Congress) is going to support the proposal, it is a union…but how can the two biggest associations, Federation of Malaysian Manufacturers and the Chinese Chamber of Commerce not be represented?” he asked.
When contacted by KiniBiz, MTUC President Khalid Atan declined to comment on the reports, and said that a press conference has been slated for Friday morning to explain MTUC’s version of the events.
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