Labour Day is a day of celebration for workers around the world, but for some Malaysians, it was a day to send out a Mayday distress call.
A few actually did to this newspaper yesterday, talking of low wages driving them to take up two or three jobs with the help of drugs. We are not surprised. Consider some numbers.
The Department of Statistics says Malaysia's poverty line income is RM2,208 and yet, the law is happy with a minimum wage of RM1,500. Little wonder, bus and lorry drivers resort to drugs to clock the trips to earn the extra money, putting themselves, passengers and other road users in grave danger.
The government needs to get serious about eradicating poverty, not just about ending abject poverty. Remember, 50 per cent of workers in the country earn a monthly wage of RM2,000 — RM208 below the poverty line income.
The government could have done something in 2018 when Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM) pointed to the living wage as an answer out of the morass in its 2017 Annual Report. In that year, BNM said the living wage, defined as the minimum income needed to be an active member of society and to be free from severe financial stress, was RM2,700 for an individual and RM6,500 for a couple with two children.
Call them the survival wages of city dwellers. Obviously, these will vary across the length and breadth of the country. But businesses stood in the way, calling the living wage harmful. The Malaysian Employers Federation had a favourite word for such employee-friendly terms: unrealistic. We are not surprised. It said the same thing about the minimum wage, when the government proposed to increase it from RM1,200 to the current level of RM1,500.
The government needs to challenge the conventional wisdom of employers on living wages. Businesses think they are paying workers what they are worth. Do they? How do they measure this? There is just no evidence that it is so. Because businesses have never been challenged, they have been getting away with it for the longest time. Their argument is as dismal as their economics.
We think the reason why employers rage against the living wage is this: they lose the chance to profiteer. Employers must know this: if they pay a worker RM1,500 when he should be paid RM2,700, he is not going to produce what he is worth as he would be labouring under severe financial stress. A stressed mind is never a productive one. Time for capital to be compassionate to labour. But we grant employers this much. Businesses must make profits, though there is a huge difference between earning profits and profiteering.
But employment isn't the only answer for Malaysian households to enjoy living wages. Malaysian households, defined as a family of four, tend to have a single breadwinner. Cost of living pressures and the need for a better standard of living call for a rethink. Self-employment has now become a necessary alternative. But for this to happen, the government has to take it onboard as part of its campaign to end poverty.
As the men are busy at work, the women folk, trained as micro entrepreneurs, can help turn the household income to a living wage, thus removing the pressure on employers and the government. Give it a think, a deep one, we say.