This is the 2nd part of Malaysiakini's interview with Malaysian Trade Union Congress(MTUC)'s Secretary General
See earlier related posts:-
MTUC suports the TPPA - happy with labour reforms it brings? A sad day for Malaysia? - Malaysiakini Interview
A perusal of MTUC's own website will not disclose what the poposed labour amendments MTUC Secretary General is talking about? Nobody knows - wonder even if workers know. MTUC claims it has proposed amendments to the labour laws, and that the government is delaying...
But the problem of the MTUC modus operandi seem to 'secrecy'. Are they proposing good amendments or bad amendments - are they afraid to be OPEN about what they are proposing. When did they propose? When did the government agree?
If laws need to be repealed or amended, then the struggle must be open and transparent.
Gopal is reported saying, '..Only 270 Trade Unions in Malaysia - that is wrong. According to government statistics, in 2016 there are 732 trade unions, of which there are 485 private sector unions, and the number of union membership is 913,271.[Sadly, since 2014 the union membership has been dropping. In 2014, union membership was 930512].
Is Riot aware of his responsibilities, asks MTUC sec-gen
Alyaa Azhar Published Updated
INTERVIEW Human Resources
Minister Richard Riot Jaem's performance has left Malaysian Trades Union
Congress (MTUC) secretary-general N Gopal Kishnam wondering if he knows
what his responsibilities are.
The ministry, he said, had yet to respond to MTUC's proposed
amendments to the current labour laws - amendments that it confirmed
receiving from the congress two years ago.
“It is more than two years, the Human Resources Ministry said that it
had received (the proposed amendments) and is still studying them.
“In between that, the ministry’s secretary-general has already
changed three times and the document is still there,” said Gopal in an
interview with Malaysiakini.
This showed that the ministry was not serious in listening to the workers' plight, he said.
“Why do I say that? The government didn’t bother to listen to (proposed) amendments to our labour laws.
“They made some amendments but on most occasions, the employers are not listening to the employees,” he said.
Despite meetings held between MTUC and the ministry, Gopal said the
union’s requests were not heeded simply because the “trade union
density” in the country was very low.
“It’s not that workers are not keen to join trade unions, but the
system has been structured in such a way that it’s not easy to form a
union in every workplace,” he said.
In the following excerpt, Gopal talks about the formation of unions
as well as the issue of minimum wage and labour laws in the country.
What is the process to register a trade union?
Why trade unions never improved in Malaysia is simply because of the
regulations. Registering a trade union in this country is very easy; all
we need is only seven workers. Get the standard application form from
the Human Resources Ministry and the group just needs to fill in the
blanks and they can apply to register a union.
But getting recognition from employers is the problem. To represent
workers, you must first get recognition from the employer. And 99
percent of employers will not give the recognition.
Subsequently, the union has to report the matter to the Industrial
Relations Department. The department will ascertain the right union for
the group of workers and whether the union has the majority of workers
supporting it.
Whether this is the right union or not, the department … to ascertain
the majority of workers (support the union), they must conduct a secret
ballot. To conduct a secret ballot, there is the ‘B form’ which
indicates the number of employees who are working in that workplace on
the day the union sought recognition.
The officer will take a very long time to submit this form -
sometimes it takes two years. For the secret ballot, the department will
fix a day for everyone to come and vote whether they want the union or
not.
The issue is this - if the secret ballot is conducted after two
years, some workers would have left the employment and migrant workers
would have even gone back to their country of origin. If they don’t come
to vote, that would be construed as voting against the union.
It took the ministry three years to conduct a secret ballot for one
company; by the time the secret ballot was conducted, 50 percent of the
migrant workers had already left. MTUC is pushing the minister to change
this for many years (but) until today, the minister is not changing the
regulations.
What is the current number of unions?
The latest figure is about 270 unions in the country. The number of
unions over the last 30 years has increased tremendously but that does
not reflect in the membership because of enterprise unions.
A workplace where there are only 50 workers, they can form (a union)
and anywhere there is more than seven workers they can register a union.
But whether that union serves as a union and serves their members is a
question that needs to be answered.
In
fact, at one point of time, when we only had eight million people in
the workforce, we had about 10 percent membership (in unions).
Whereas
now, with 14.2 million people, we have only about 800,000 members. (So)
percentage wise, it has dropped.
This is partly due to the presence of migrant workers. Although they
want to join, the employers are stopping them from joining trade unions.
When they (employers) hear anyone trying to join, they (workers) will
be sent back in the next available flight so others are scared.
What is your view on the country’s labour laws and regulations? Are they adequate enough for the benefit of workers?
Over the period of 70 years, there were amendments taking place. But
in most occasions, those amendments were more to protect employers than
employees. For example in 2012, there was one amendment on the payment
of wages. The Employment Act 1955 states that wages should be paid
within seven days from the cut-off period. This was implemented in 1955,
there were no computers then but employers could manually calculate and
pay accordingly.
But now the amendment says a company can pay one month later for
workers who work overtime on off days and public holidays. We are in the
information technology (IT) world, we are supposed to get our salary
much earlier, but the Malaysian government has amended in which it is
giving room for employers to manipulate poor workers. That’s why I say
the amendments are for the employers.
Why do you think most labour laws are for the benefit of employers?
I think that the government is friendlier towards investors than to the workers.
What is MTUC’s latest stand on minimum wage and the implementation of the current system?
We are not in agreement with the government on three issues. As per
the Mimimum Wage Act, it should have been reviewed and the minister
should have made the announcement on Jan 1, 2015 but it was delayed for
18 months.
The earlier (minimum wage) figure was of RM1,200 but the government only announced RM1,000 – that’s another unhappiness.
We are also not happy that the government is dividing Malaysians,
especially the private sector, with the minimum wage (RM1,000 for
peninsular Malaysia and RM920 for Sabah and Sarawak). The actual fact
is, the poverty line in these two states compared to peninsular Malaysia
is much higher. When the poverty line is higher, how can the minimum
wage be lower than the peninsula? The nearest we are expecting is at
least for it to be similar to peninsular Malaysia.
'Can you comment on the issue of cost of living and ways to improve it?
MTUC is in the process of sending a letter to the prime minister as
part of our Budget wish list and our focus is the issue of cost of
living which is going up every day. The government has to come out with a
proper mechanism on how to control prices.
(Also) we are requesting for personal relief on income tax. At the
moment the government is giving RM9,000, which is insufficient. We are
not denying that over the years the government has given small
improvements but this time it has to be at least RM12,000.
And we don’t want the government to withdraw any subsidies extended
to some corporations. If they withdraw the subsidy, the poor rakyat will
end up paying. Corporations are businesses – for them, either the
government pays or you pay. At the end of the day, they want the same
profit for their business.
The
cost of houses is also very high. If not the government, who else can
control this? The government came out with an affordable housing scheme
but with a RM300,000 property with an income of RM3,500, how is this
affordable?
We
also don’t agree with developers extending loans. We have enough loan
sharks in the country, we don’t want a new problem. The government
should instead ask banks to be more relaxed rather than going very hard.
So housing is another area that is of our concern. We are looking
forward to some sort of leverage from the government to overcome this
issue.
What is MTUC’s future direction?
The challenges are getting greater, we need to equip (ourselves) with
the proper facilities to face that. MTUC will be seeing our next
triennial delegates conference (TDC) very soon (on Nov 29 and Nov 30).
So whoever is elected to positions, they have bigger tasks to carry out
with the government, employers, as well as other NGOs. So that is going
to be the difficult task of MTUC.
Of course, there is some light at the end of the tunnel due to the
Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA), but the labour chapter alone
is not going to improve Malaysian standards.
Challenges are going to be greater in a different form but we have to
prepare ourselves, and I believe that the MTUC leadership is in the
position to face all that.-Malaysiakini, 15/10/2016
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