The meeting of the tri-partite wage committee, scheduled for today to discuss the increase of the minimum wage to 400 baht/day, has been postponed to this Friday after the five employer’s representatives did not show up, claiming that they had other business to deal with.
Labour Permanent Secretary Pairoj Chotikasatien said today that he decided to postpone the meeting in the absence of the employer’s representatives.
He said the meeting was supposed to discuss increasing minimum wage rate to 400 baht/day in workplaces which employ at least 200 people, in which case about 3 million Thai and one million migrant workers would benefit from the rise.
Wage subcommittees in Phuket and Samut Prakan have proposed more than the 400 baht rate, while 20 other provinces have not proposed a wage adjustment.
Pairoj said that the government has adopted some measures to absorb the wage increase’s financial burden of small and medium-sized businesses, by providing them with low-interest soft loans and reducing their contributions to the Social Security Fund to just one percent of the their employees’ salaries for one year.
An employee’s representative, Veerasuk Kaewbunpun, said that workers, these days, cannot survive on 300-baht per day, due to the rising cost of living.
For the sake of equality, he said the minimum wage should be equal for all workers, whether they are Thais or non-Thais.
Labour Minister Phiphat Ratchakitprakarn urged employer’s representatives to attend the meeting this Friday, saying that the government has a timeframe for announcing a new minimum wage.
