First and foremost, in conjunction with Labour day, I would like to extend my solidarity to the B40 community who are made up hospital front liners. garbage collectors, grocery workers, cleaners who have been a vital backbone of the economy in these trying times of Covit 19. They are most forgotten workers during good economic times where they were not recognized through dignified remuneration for their roles in ensuring normality in providing the most basic services to the nation.
It is time the Government recognizes their contribution by giving them adequate training and certification that would turn them into professional service providers. During my time as a Human Resources Minister I suggested the minimum wage to be increased, but we got a lot of the opposition but today these workers are the one who cleaning up, distributing food and ensuring our surroundings are clean.
The Covit 19 pandemic has created new paradigm in Industrial relations in this country. We are living in extraordinary times and that has reconfigured the understanding of employment security. There have been various issues related to employment that has transpired since the MCO was enforced on March 18 2020 that challenges our concept of industrial relations which has been seen merely from a macro-perspective of tripartism.
The Hotel, tourism and F&B and manufacturing industry have taken a severe down turn and currently in the process of laying off or retrenching some of their workers. Workers who are self employed have lost their source of income and there are workers who work with contractors are told to stay at home without any wages. Many organizations have instituted a pay cut or unpaid leave which have been the major concern among workers.
The unemployment rate was 3.3 percent in 2019 during Pakatan Harapan rule, and it could go up to 4 percent currently according to labour analyst. According MIER retrenchment rates could reach up to 2.4 million.
The government has come up with initiatives like wage subsidy scheme with the condition that employers retain their workers for at least six months and employment retention program for those who are fully on unpaid leave for 1 to 6 months. Unfortunately, some employers especially contract for service providers have not opted for this option. It seems that they are in the margins of industrial relations.
In this context there were various questions raised by concern Malaysians that were posted to facebook page before my video presentation on labour issues on 29th of April 2020.
From the question that I receive I notice there are elements of good Industrial relations practices that has been ignored, besides information deficit of how workers could move forward in meeting challenges ahead.
Firstly, there have been an absents dialogue between employer and employees on current situation where decision have been made unilaterally by certain employers to cut salaries or forcing workers to take unpaid leaves.
I am in view labour officers should play a proactive role in the context of law and good conscience to facilitate dialogue between employers and stake holders before any pay-cuts and retrenchment exercises could be done. For example, many hotels have close down leaving their workers in limbo without any transition plans. The fact is many of this organizations have no unions to represent them.
To fill this gap the Government should be proactive in initiating and facilitating a dialogue with all stake holders in an organization that contemplating to layoff or retrenchment of their workers.
This exposes another serious flaw in the training and development vision and plans in our country where workers are not trained to become multiskilled and not easily transferable from one industry to the other. There is need to relook into our training development model that has fail to train the workforce in facing a multi-dimensional labour market.
It is vital to review the HRDF model of training and development, and address the importance of immediate accessibility of institutions of training that could cater to unemployed workers, besides addressing the information deficit where many workers are not aware of programs and options in the market. During my tenure as a Human resource Minister I initiated TVET classes to be conducted in the evening so that people can reskilled and upskill themselves. It is hoped that this initiative could be continued because it would help workers to add value to their organization they are currently or it would help them to easily move into another industry from new found skills.
Therefore, I would like to urge the government to institute dialogue with industries and all stake holders to handle issues related to unpaid leaves and the processes related retrenchment in amicable way for the sake of employers and workers who going through a difficult period of time. The government should do whatever it takes to provide the necessary conditions to prevent any massive retrenchment exercise that would destabilize the nation’s stability. We going to see the possibility of industrial court being flooded with cases if government is not going to proactively address these issues.
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