Garment industry responds to minimum wage law

01 September 2015
Garment industry responds to minimum wage law
Photo: Hong Sar/Mizzima

Myanmar has for the first time set a national minimum wage following two years of embittered negotiations that saw garment factory owners threaten to close if the wage was set too high the Andalou Agency reported on 31 August.
Employers will have to pay at least 3,600 Kyats, roughly $2.80, to workers for an eight-hour day from 1 September.
Factory owners have responded to the new law, announced in state media over the weekend, by laying off workers, Ko Nay Linn Aung of the All Myanmar Workers Union Network told the Myanmar Times.
He said “hundreds” have already been fired in HlaingTharyar, a township in the commercial capital Yangon that is home to an industrial zone.
The report added that rules regulating compensation for workers who get laid off were recently changed to allow employers to sack people with less than six months at the company without paying them a severance package.