Monthly Archives: May 2021

Why was a minimum wage system introduced by the government?

When our government introduced the National Wages Consultative Council Act 2011, it was intended to address the low wages prevailing in the country, especially in the private sector. Employers were then paying very low basic pay not only in the Klang Valley but throughout the country. Under this act, the Minimum Wage Order 2012 was introduced, establishing a minimum wage of RM900.

The underlying factor for the government in introducing the minimum wage order was to mitigate the unfair low-wage system prevailing in the country. It was a case of government intervention when the employers failed to pay equitable rates of pay, thus driving wage levels in a race to the bottom!

Fast forward to 2021 and what we need to ask is whether the minimum wage system is still relevant given that wages, even for degree holders, have been compromised due to the weak labour employment market.

Unemployment among the youth in 2020 terms was estimated to be 11.7% whereas total unemployment was hovering around 4.8%. Even more alarming is that about 70% of jobs seekers were youth, according to a report published by the EIS-UPMCS Center For Future Labour Market Studies.

According to a Ministry Of Higher Education survey, about 10% of fresh graduates were paid between RM1,001 and RM1,500 a month since 2010. The survey also found that in 2020, more graduates fell into this income bracket reaching a decade-high 22.3%.

These statistics suggest that low wages among the youth and fresh graduates have a nexus with the high rate of unemployment among the youth and fresh graduates. With the prevailing economic conditions, our youth and fresh graduates, are forced to accept low wages just to secure a job however incompatible the wages may be.

Low wages, by any standards, are an indication that our young workers are being exploited due to the prevailing depressed employment opportunities.

A Bank Negara study in 2018 stated that, for a single adult to sustain himself in Kuala Lumpur, he or she would need RM2,700 a month. The study also revealed that a couple without children would need RM4,500 and a couple with two children would need RM6,500 a month.

The study is based on what is termed as a living wage a living wage is defined as the minimum income necessary for a worker to meet his or her basic needs including food, housing and other necessities.

On the other hand, a minimum wage is set by the government with the aim of protecting workers against unduly low pay.

Given the 2018 Bank Negara study, the truth is that middle and low-income workers are not earning enough household income to sustain themselves. So, workers are forced to work excessive hours of work working overtime, working on rest days and public holidays, and even working a second job to supplement their household income.

Working prolonged hours and, by extension, enhancing production for employers, results in the deterioration of the workers physical and mental health.

Working long hours of work is as good as modern-day slavery: in the absence of decent, sustainable wages for an eight-hour work day, workers are forced to supplement their incomes by working excessive overtime, working on rest days and public holidays and even taking on a second job.

So is the existing minimum wage system still relevant under the circumstances?

Prof Yeah Kim Leng from the Sunway University Business School feels that, given the Bank Negara study 2018, workers will need a side income to make ends meet on a minimum wage of RM1,200. (Free Malaysia MT 28.10.2019).

It is, therefore, apparent that workers cannot survive on the current minimum wage of RM1,200 a month.

Given this reality, we need to deliberate whether we need to shift from a minimum wage system to a living wage module.

The existing National Minimum Wage Council ought to be rebranded to a national living wage council with the absolute power to decide on a living wage rate of pay without being subservient to the government.

As no wage system can remain stagnant, a bi-annual revision of the living wage like the existing mechanism for the minimum wage ought to continue.

It is argued through academic research that there is a correlation between the rate of unionisation and income inequality: the lower the rate of unionisation, the higher the income inequality.

In Malaysia, it is an indisputable fact that existing labour laws impede organising efforts by unions.

Take the case of workers in the electronics industry. According to international standards, the electronics sector is classified under the electrical and electronics sub-sector. Going by that internationally accepted classification, the existing Electrical Industry Workers Union (EIWU) ought to have been accorded the right to organise workers in the electronics sector.

If the EIWU had been accorded the right to organise workers in the electronics sector, the chances are that wage inequality could have been addressed substantially in that sector, which employs thousands of workers.

But the government did not permit the EIWU to organise these workers so as to suppress the numerical strength of the EIWU and, in the process, perpetuate wage inequality in the electronics sector. Ultimately, the governments ploy was to dilute the unionisation of these workers into a regional demography.

It is thus obvious that a fundamental flaw in the countrys income inequality lies in the correlation with the rate of unionisation in the country.

Where unionised workers are covered by collective agreements, which provides for salary adjustments once in three years, about 93% of the unorganised workers are left to the whims of their employers in granting such periodic salary adjustments. And where unionised employees are entitled to annual salary increments, by virtue of the collective agreements that are in force, 93% of unorganised workers have no legal right to demand such annual increments from their employers.

What then are the challenges? Until laws that curtail organising efforts are removed, our trade union movement will continue to function without the strength of numbers. Without laws to promote a vibrant and progressive labour movement, we will continue to function as an ineffective movement to transform the socioeconomic position of the working class.

Under the circumstances, the trade union movement has to pursue a transformation of the existing repressive labour laws so as to provide a conducive legislative ecosystem that would promote the unionisation of workers.

Economist Shankaran Nambiar from the Malaysian Institute Of Economic Research, while agreeing that the current minimum wage cannot meet minimum living standards (of the civil servants), felt the government should wait for the economy to improve before raising the minimum wage.

That proposition is devoid of any justification for the simple reason that the government is under an obligation to address the existing income disparity to ensure that civil servants are paid an acceptable living wage. And, by extension, a living wage should also be implemented for private sector workers.

In parting, the government must accord Cuepacs the right to collective bargaining, under International Labour Organization Convention 98, read together with Convention 154.

Cuepacs, as the single largest trade union organisation representing civil servants, must be given the right to collectively bargain for and on behalf of the civil servants and not be at the mercy of the government dictating civil servants wages and terms and conditions of employment. The right to collective bargaining must be accorded to Cuepacs consonant with the guiding conventions of the ILO.

So, what position should the labour movement take under the circumstances?

The challenges are set out in clear terms.

First, the labour movement has to relentlessly pursue a transformation of the embedded pro-employer labour laws. We need to continue our struggle to ensure that the government conforms with the core ILO labour standards such as Convention 87, 98, 154 and 190.

Second, we need to pursue a holistic realignment of the socioeconomic policies of the government that has given preference to employers and which have margainlised both the working class and the trade union movement.

Thirdly, we need to demand that the outdated minimum wage system be recalibrated to a living wage module based on the 2018 Bank Negara study.

K Veeriah is a veteran trade unionist based in Bukit Mertajam, Penang

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The minimum wage vs living wage conundrum - Aliran

This spring, public health officials have been laser-focused on getting more Americans vaccinated against COVID-19. So why do racial disparities persist around vaccination? And once more Americans are vaccinated, how do we ensure that Black and Latino families arent left vulnerable to future public health crises? In the latest episode of Better Off, Mary Bassett talks about the historical roots of health inequities, and the big changes needed to close those gaps.

Guest: Mary T. Bassett, director of the Franois Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights at Harvard University.

[Music]

Anna Fisher-Pinkert: From the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, this is Better Off. A podcast about the biggest public health problems we face today . . .

Mary Bassett: We have to remember the kinds of vulnerabilities that made the US have a disproportionate share of the worlds deaths, as compared to our population, despite our vast resources.

Anna Fisher-Pinkert: . . . and the people innovating to create public health solutions.

Mary Bassett: And those wont be fixed with a vaccine.

Anna Fisher-Pinkert: Im your host, Anna Fisher-Pinkert.

Anna Fisher-Pinkert: I got my COVID-19 vaccine in a busy clinic in Boston. As soon as the nurse gave me the shot, she handed me a little timer set for 15 minutes, the length of time they ask you to hang around to make sure you dont have any adverse effects. I sat in the waiting room, surrounded by masked people sort of squirming impatiently in their seats. And one by one, the timers went off [beeping sound]. Theres one [beeping sound], theres another one. . . each little beep inching us closer to the end of the pandemic. The people walking out of the clinic looked lighter, happier, than the people walking in.

But the vaccines arent reaching everyone. The vaccination rate for Black and Latino Americans is lower than for white Americans. And the death and hospitalization rates are higher. The pandemic has revealed how our health care system repeatedly fails people of color. And even if we get everyone vaccinated thats just one virus. How do we avoid going down the exact same path again? How do we address the entrenched health disparities in this country?

So, in this episode were going to dive into all those big questions because this week, were better off with Mary Bassett, health and human rights expert.

Mary Bassett: My name is Mary Bassett and I am the director of the Franois Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human rights at Harvard University.

Anna Fisher-Pinkert: As of mid-April, the Kaiser Family Foundation reported that the vaccination rate in the U.S. for white people was 1.8 times higher than the rate for Latino people, and 1.6 times higher than the rate for Black people. So I asked Mary Bassett to talk about why this gap exists.

Mary Bassett: It has simply has to do with access. Where you get a vaccine, where this vaccination sites are located, what it takes to get an appointment, whether people have access and capacity to use the internet. . . Whether they have the time to take an appointment at any time its offered to them, and that kind of flexibility in their lives, whether they have transport. Its all getting better. Thats for sure. And more and more people of all groups are getting vaccinated.

But the racial, ethnic disparities that weve witnessed throughout this pandemic have been replicated in terms of the ability to administer vaccinations to the people who arguably most need that protection.

Anna Fisher-Pinkert: But this winter, a lot of media sources were more focused on vaccine hesitancy among Black Americans. Like this story from CNN in February:

News anchor: Health officials worry misinformation could complicate the process of getting shots in the arms of Black and Brown communities. New CDC data from the first month of vaccination shows Black and Latino people lagging way behind in the states reporting racial breakdowns. So far, 60%. . .

Anna Fisher-Pinkert: So, is hesitancy a part of the picture?

Mary Bassett: Of course it is. I mean, Anna, I would argue that everyone has the right to get their questions answered, and their reasonable concerns addressed. Education, it should be part of any vaccine campaign, and telling people to line up and do as theyre told is not ever a good public health strategy or ever a good strategy at all.

As people know, theres a very troubled history. And even more than that, theres peoples day-to-day experience with health care systems in which they dont experience dignity and respect, which everyone is entitled to expect when they seek health care, that makes people of African descent in particular very wary.

Anna Fisher-Pinkert: But if you want to look at the numbers, a March 2021 poll, for example, from NPR, PBS News Hour, and Marist shows that, actually, 73% of Black people and 70% of white people plan to get the shot. So, in other words, hesitancy isnt limited to people of color.

Mary Bassett: Im just perplexed as to why people, when people talk about vaccine hesitancy, theyre not worrying about white Republicans who have, you know, by far the highest proportion of people who are declaring that theyll never get right vaccinated. And I worry, about why people keep coming back to certain cultural tropes, this notion that Black people are defiant, resistant.

[Music]

Im from a neighborhood in Manhattan called Washington Heights. Most of my family still lives there. And my sister accompanied my mother, who was 92 and fully eligible, to get vaccinated. And when she got there, it was the vaccination site in Washington Heights, but she said, when she pulled up, it looked like people were coming from the opera.

They were from Westchester, New Jersey, and they had figured out that they could get vaccinated at this site. When she went in there, there was nobody around who spoke Spanish. The neighborhood, you know, has a very large Spanish speaking population.

So there were lots of signals that youre actually not welcome here. Whether they were intended or not.

Anna Fisher-Pinkert: From Dr. Bassetts vantage point, access to vaccines is just one of many areas of the pandemic response where people of color have been left out. Black and Latino people are overrepresented in the essential workforce, and in the prison system which means there are a lot of people of color who could not stay home and could not stay socially distant.

Mary Bassett: I would have thought that there would be recognition that certain occupations create high-risk situations.

Anna Fisher-Pinkert: We know that age is a huge risk factor for COVID-19 but Mary Bassett argues we need to look at racial disparities more closely. While the majority of Americans who have died of COVID-19 were over the age of 65, younger Black and Latino people have died at much higher rates than their white peers.

Mary Bassett: Even though the risk of death is much higher in somebody whos 90 years old, the fact that we were seeing, relative to whites, Blacks and Latinos, having five- to ninefold the risk of dying when they were young to middle-aged adults is simply wrong. Not only because its terrible to die before youve had a chance to have, you know, a full arc of life, but because these are people who have families who are breadwinners, who have children who are dependent on them. And the knock-on effects are very large.

Anna Fisher-Pinkert: But the roots of these racial and ethnic disparities are far older than the COVID-19 pandemic.

Mary Bassett: I think as we think about the vaccine, we have to remember the kinds of vulnerabilities that made the U.S. have a disproportionate share of the worlds deaths, as compared to our population, despite our vast resources, both material and human.

And those wont be fixed with a vaccine.

Anna Fisher-Pinkert: Even if we manage to vaccinate our way to herd immunity, which some scientists are skeptical about, the COVID-19 vaccines only protect against one virus. In public health, thats called a downstream solution. It doesnt fix whatever issue is upstream.

Mary Bassett: I think that theres a tendency that we all have to, you know, look forward to a biomedical fix. And certainly, these vaccines are triumph of science. I dont mean to say that science hasnt vastly increased our ability to protect health, but it doesnt solve the problem of people who are working in low-wage jobs without protections at their work site, who are working multiple jobs because they cant afford to live on what they earn at their job. It doesnt fix the fact that there were all these people who went to work without personal protective equipment.

Anna Fisher-Pinkert: In the U.S., where you work, what you earn, and your health outcomes are all intertwined. And so I asked Dr. Bassett, how do we begin to address those issues? And her answer was. . . pretty big!

Mary Bassett: I think we also have to talk about capitalism. Capitalism has been, joined at the hip or as Ibrahim Kendi says, are conjoined twins with the phenomenon of racism, which is based on the idea of the superiority of whites to people of color, particularly people of African descent. And that ideology was what permitted nearly 250 years of exploitation of enslaved labor, which was not just a quaint system that let America have a sort of slightly sordid start. It was enormously profitable. And it profited the North and the South.

Anna Fisher-Pinkert: The legacy of slavery still has an impact on the health and well-being of Black Americans.

Mary Bassett: The legacy has meant that people of African descent in this country have never in a single year that weve had statistics had life expectancies that were equal to the life expectancies of people descended from Europeans.

We have narrowed the gaps. Weve never eliminated them. In some cases, the relative gaps have actually risen. In New York City, where I was the health commissioner, the infant mortality relative gap went up to three to one.

Despite the fact that this is not natural, its been so prolonged in our country that people start to think that, you know, nobodys surprised when Black people have higher mortality rates, its just always like that. Well, its not natural or inevitable. So Ive lately been thinking about the idea thats been floating around for a long time. . . And its the idea of reparations for the transatlantic slave trade, for the 250 years, nearly, of enslaved labor and the terror that followed.

Anna Fisher-Pinkert: Reparations are a controversial idea in the United States. A 2020 Reuters/Ipsos poll found that only 1 in 10 white Americans supported reparations, and only about half of Black Americans support the idea. But in 2021, the city of Evanston, IL became the first U.S. city to offer reparations. In this case, specifically for the descendants of Black residents who were excluded from home ownership by racist housing policies in the 20th century, including redlining. Qualifying households are set to receive $25,000 for home repairs or down payments on property.

Mary Bassett: So what theyre planning in Evanston is a good start and its an honest. Uh, effort, I think by a local jurisdiction, but this is not a problem to be solved by local jurisdictions. This requires the federal government, because all that happened was entirely legal and not only, permitted, but often endorsed and led by the federal government. Redlining, for example, wasnt just related to the private prejudices of developers. It was, put in place and championed, in fact, by the rating system that was developed by the Home Owners Loan Corporation in the 1930s, a government entity, a federal government entity.

Anna Fisher-Pinkert: What has been happening more frequently at a local, state, and national level is a new interest in discussing racism as a public health crisis.

Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer: Im announcing today that Im signing an executive order declaring racism a public health crisis in Louisville.

Mary Bassett: Thereve been lots of them declarations, that racism is a public health crisis. I think theyre close to 180 of them by various jurisdictions.

Boston Mayor Marty Walsh: But first I want to declare racism to be a public health crisis in the city of Boston.

Michigan Mayor Gretchen Whitmer: Today I also signed an executive directive declaring racism as a public health crisis in Michigan.

Anna Fisher-Pinkert: Most recently, Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control, also issued a statement on racism and health.

Mary Bassett: Well, it really, its important that the federal public health agency is acknowledging this, right? I took a look at the CDC website. And the, the only time they use racism was to say something like discrimination, including racism. The acknowledgement of, of the impact of racism on our bodies and our health is important in and of itself.

So declarations matter. Words matter. But additionally, they did say more things than that. They talked about how theyre gonna look at how theyre allocating their budget. They talked about taking a look at themselves. They meaning the CDC. They need to have an agency that looks like our country. Thats what Bill de Blasio wanted in New York City. And we were able to do that. The health department, when I joined it as commissioner, had not a single Black or Latino in its leadership. And when I left, the over half of the agency leadership was non-white.

Anna Fisher-Pinkert: From Mary Bassetts perspective as a former New York City health commissioner under Mayor Bill de Blasio, its important that everyone who works in public health wrestle with the issue of racial equity.

Mary Bassett: One person isnt going to figure this all out. What I did, as health commissioner was, I said to the entire agency leadership, whether they worked in finance or in human resources, or ran the lab. . . no matter what their area I wanted them to apply a racial equity lens, their work and it was extraordinary what people came up with.

Its really important that there be leadership and Im really grateful to Dr. Walensky for taking that step, but it still takes courage, I would say.

Anna Fisher-Pinkert: In the summer of 2020, at the peak of the protests over George Floyds murder, a colleague of mine interviewed Mary Bassett and asked her if she felt hopeful that real change could happen toward dealing with structural racism. And she answered, Im more hopeful than Ive been in a long time. When I spoke to Dr. Bassett, there was no verdict yet in the case against Derek Chauvin, the police officer who killed Floyd. I asked her if she still felt hopeful.

Mary Bassett: I do. I do. Because my whole working life really has been a pushback. Ive witnessed a pushback against the great society legislation of the 1960s. Remember that the last time the majority of white voters voted for a Democrat was in 1964.

This past summer I witnessed an outpouring that I just havent seen in well over a generation. In 50 years, really. And it was a multi-racial outpouring. And I think that there is a growing willingness to embrace the reality that racism hurts all of us. The United States has departed from its peer nations in terms of our life expectancy, despite spending more on health than any other nation. Our life expectancy is declining, and the pandemic is going to push it down further and make it even more unequal. So, I think theres a good reason for everyone to feel that we have a stake in this. And clearly many, many people did who, who took to the streets to say that this lethal racial hierarchy is not something that we are willing to endure any longer Black and white.

So that makes me hopeful.

Anna Fisher-Pinkert: Hope is something we all need in 2021. And I think everyone is finding it in different places. You can choose to find it in a protest, a declaration, or in a little vial of vaccine.

Thats all for this week. Thanks for listening.

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Im Anna Fisher-Pinkert, host and producer of Better Off a podcast of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

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