Workers in Myanmar must be paid K3,600 a day (less than $3) after the minimum wage was finally settled on by labor representatives and employers on Tuesday.
The agreed wage – lower than neighboring Thailand but higher than Bangladesh – will be submitted to the Union government for approval, the Myanmar Times reported.
It follows months of protest and threats.
Union leaders and workers had called for at least K4,000 for an eight-hour day but employers resisted, with some saying they would close factories if the wage was set as high as K3,600.
U Myo Aung, secretary at the National Committee on the Minimum Wage, said the Ministry of Labor would assess whether to slash overtime pay from double time to time-and-a-half.
“The minimum wage is the first step for ensuring workers have enough to live on, and we can try to increase it later,” U Naw Aung, a workers’ representative, told the Times.
Photo / Wikicommons
