Our workforce can’t even keep to time! Our workforce doesn’t turn up for work! Our workforce is not skilled enough! Our workforce takes extra-long lunch breaks!
Our workforce can’t perform to match the demand! $6 an hour would mean one person manning a three-man post without assistants and the manager filling in the position when that employee doesn’t show, goes on leave or is burnt out! And, our economy can’t afford it!
These are some of the remarks that come to the mind of employers of MSME businesses with the new minimum wage.
As usual, it’s another way of the rich to become richer because they can afford it, with the poor closing business and working for the rich.
If you want to be really fair and not create an economic crisis in Fiji, make the $6 an hour rate the minimum wage rate of SME’s and larger enterprises and prove this fact because the fact is, the MSME’s will be left to absorb those that will be laid off from the larger businesses at $4 an hour because they will surely feel the pinch.
Lastly, can we always factor into our wage rate increase or decrease formula our ability to live beyond our means and see where that rightfully fits!
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