Unions urge PM and Govt. to grant wage hike thro’ legal provisions
View(s):A group of unions has appealed to Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe and the Government to provide private sector workers with a monthly wage hike of Rs. 2,500 through legal provision passed in parliament as previously done in year 2005 and without further delay.
“In … a situation where investors/employers are allowed to enjoy unaccounted benefits and profits, we believe and are convinced, the workers have an undisputed right to share such benefits,” noted Anton Marcus, Joint Secretary of the FTZ&GSEU (the premier free trade zones’ union) on behalf of 16 unions.
The letter said that the unions were perturbed and disappointed in how the government approaches the issue of wage increase to the private sector workers. “We have previously made it clear that it is the private sector labour which makes tremendous contributions to our national economy by way of increased earnings on foreign trade. We therefore requested your government to make the wage increase mandatory through a bill passed in parliament as was the case in October 2005 when a Rs.1,000 budgetary relief allowance was made.”
The government, it said instead works on the premise that the employer should not be compelled to make such wage increase, but that the employer should be allowed the discretion to make such decisions. Any steps by the government in making wage increases mandatory would have a negative effect on employers and on foreign direct investments, goes the argument.
“Ever since the stable doors of the national economy were opened in 1978, it was the employer who was given every benefit and not workers. Tax holidays, tax concessions, import duty wavers, infrastructure facilities at state expense, special legal provisions for land use, etc were handed out on the sole argument the employer needs incentives to attract foreign and local investments. The official website of the BOI-SL says a new incentive regime was introduced since 2012/2013 to attract private investments both foreign and local. These tax concessions mainly include exemptions on Corporate Income Tax, Customs Duty, Value Added Tax and Ports & Airports Development Levy,” the letter noted.
“What benefit have such incentives brought to the larger society, to citizens and the workers during the past 35 plus years? There is no monitoring of incentives and benefits given to investors/employers in terms of social returns. There is no social audit too. Yet we don’t dispute the fact such massive concessions have created a new rich class of Colombo based urbanites and a comparatively very small number of rich business people, who have turned out as sponsors of political regimes, making it difficult for governments and ministers to decide independently,” it said.
The unions said that employers are continually given benefits and concessions in terms of billions of rupees annually denying the people their legitimate revenue, on which there is not even a cost benefit estimate or an audit. “And these unaudited benefits and concessions are provided to employers through legal provisions with the parliament enacting necessary laws and regulations. We therefore wish to emphasise here, the employers thus have no right to oppose legal provisions to increase wages of the employees,” the letter said.