Local workers most affected by wage exemption for hotels, says union

 

A minimum wage at hotels was a right earned after a hard-fought court battle over eight years, says a union leader. (Bernama pic)

PETALING JAYA: Malaysian workers will be most affected by a temporary exemption for hotels from the requirement to pay the new minimum wage of RM1,500 a month, says a hotel workers union.

The union’s secretary-general Rusli Affandi said Putrajaya was making a mistake.

He said the exemption was regressive, coming after the union’s eight-year-long struggle for a minimum wage to be paid by hotels.

Rusli heads the National Union of Hotel, Bar and Restaurant Workers in Peninsular Malaysia.

He said Malaysians made up the majority of hotel employees and would be the most affected by the exemption.

The minimum wage policy was imposed on hotels by an industrial court decision in 2004. The minimum wage then was RM900 (West Malaysia) and RM800 (East Malaysia).

A new minimum wage of RM1,500 a month will be implemented from May 1. However, farms, hotels and tourism companies, and firms with fewer than five employees, would be temporarily exempted, human resources minister M Saravanan announced on Wednesday.

The new policy would exempt informal sectors and those which suffered losses from the Covid-19 pandemic, he said.

The Malaysian Trades Union Congress told FMT that there could not be two different sets of minimum wages if the government wanted all industries to recover properly.

“Exempting the hotel and tourism sectors from the new minimum wage may push workers towards other sectors, thereby making it harder for these two sectors to recover,” said MTUC deputy president Mohd Effendy Abdul Ghani.

Effendy urged the government to engage with all sectors, claiming that communications from the human resources minister on the implementation of the new minimum wage have been unilateral.

In a separate statement recently, the MTUC said it will wait for the government to gazette the new minimum wage order before deciding on its next steps. “If the exemptions are implemented, then MTUC has the right to take action,” said its secretary-general Kamarul Baharin Mansor. - FMT