Thai government mulls end of minimum wage nationwide

BANGKOK, June 8 (TNA) - Thai Prime Minister General Prayut Chan-ocha admits that his government, through the Ministry of Labour, is considering to scrap the minimum wage standard nationwide and to base workers’ returns on their qualifications, instead. Prime Minister General Prayut, who is also Chief of the army-led National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO), told journalists on Monday that his government cannot afford any further rise of the minimum wage, as another increase of the minimum wage, now 300 baht nationwide, will further raise production costs. The prime minister said his interim administration is considering that any new wage increase should go to quality workers and should not be across-the-board; otherwise, beneficiaries will not be Thai workers, but migrant ones. Opposing the government's plan to revoke the 300-baht minimum wage standard and float wages in local industries instead, Anusorn Thammajai, Deputy Rector of Rangsit University, cautioned, meanwhile, that the plan, if implemented, would affect low-income workers and overall domestic consumption, slow down the national economy and reduce workers’ bargaining power. Anusorn pointed out that different minimum wages in different provinces would cause workers to pack big cities, lead to family problems due to workers’ migration to the cities and result in labour shortages in some provinces. In a related development, the Thai Labour Solidarity Committee urged the Constitution Drafting Committee (CDC) to keep a section that allows representatives of the local labour sector to sit in the Thai Senate, while also seeking to increase the number of labour-representing senators to 44 and to let workers cast their votes in the areas of their workplace. (TNA)