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Indonesia: Wage hike win-win, minister says
Manpower Minister Hanif Dhakiri has described the adjusted minimum wage for 2019, an 8.03 percent increase from the current figure, as a fair balance between the needs of employers, employees and prospective employees.
The new minimum wage, he said, would below enough so that employers would not need to fire workers, but high enough to help workers maintain a decent living.
“Workers do not need to hold protests […] because there will be a guaranteed and significant wage adjustment,” he said on Saturday as reported by kompas.com.
He added that the wage adjustment would also benefit prospective employees because, by not affecting business activities, it would not lessen their chances for employment.
The wage hike is a follow up of Government Regulation No. 78/2015, which offers a mandatory formula for provincial administrations to calculate a new annual minimum wage based on the predicted inflation and economic growth of the following year.
The government has adjusted the minimum wage by 8.03 percent based on a predicted inflation of 2.88 percent and economic growth of 5.15 percent next year.
Hanif added that as of November, all 34 provinces have announced next year’s adjusted minimum wage, although eight had yet to formally report the increase to Manpower Ministry. (brf)
Source: http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2018/11/05/wage-hike-win-win-minister-says.html