THIS is disparaging that in 50 years since its independence, Bangladesh still does not have a national minimum wage to protect workers from economic exploitation. Economists, policy analysts and labour rights advocates think that the absence of national minimum wage has created a scope for wage exploitation. In 2004, the government established a minimum wage board, but it has not been effective in periodic reviews of wages in many sectors. Apparel workers played a pivotal role in the wage board formation. They too have, however, to take to the streets for an increase in the minimum wage. Apparel workers’ organisations and federations have organised protests and discussions demanding an increase in the minimum wage. Tea garden workers also went on a work abstention in August to push for a better minimum wage. Workers in the informal sector, accounting for 85 per cent of the labourers, meanwhile, remain outside of the regulatory purview and victims of the worst economic exploitation. The agricultural workers account for 40 per cent of the work force, but their daily wage is often arbitrarily set. Experts, therefore, believe that an absence of a national minimum wage has contributed to the widening income gap.

The socio-economic significance of a national minimum wage as a policy instrument to reduce both poverty and welfare receipt is globally recognised, but successive governments have remained non-committal to this issue. In the 1990s, when the apparel sector was making its mark on the global market, the need for a minimum wage was first recognised, but it took another decade to announce a minimum wage for the apparel and pharmaceutical industries. In 2001, the government announced Tk 1,200 in monthly minimum wage for small and medium industries and Tk 1,350 for major industries. Factory owners, however, rejected the government decision and the High Court, later, stayed the decision on grounds that the procedure followed in determining the minimum wage was flawed. In subsequent decades, the National Minimum Wage Board increased the wage of apparel workers, but it has always been a poverty wage as business associations have dominated the negotiations. Labourers in the informal sector, meanwhile, work without any protection. For domestic workers, a decent wage has been a far cry and physical abuse and sexual harassment are common. Workers in brickfields or ship-breaking yards, as many rights groups have said, work as indentured labourers.

It is high time that the government committed to genuine social dialogues with all stakeholders and announced a national minimum wage. In so doing, it must abandon its pro-rich policy bias and address regulatory failure in monitoring worker rights. The government must bring labourers in the informal sector under its regulatory purview. More importantly, the government should form a credible board to determine the minimum living wage so that the process is inclusive and evidence-based. The government must take the demand for a minimum living wage seriously, because a national living wage, in the long run, can help to reduce poverty and the income gap.