Chamber insists that raising the minimum wage is not the way ahead

The Times of Malta
Friday, 26th March 2010 - 14:47CET

The president of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry has declared that she 'cannot disagree more' with the idea of raising the minimum wage in order to address social problems.

The proposal was made by the director of Caritas, Mgr Victor Grech, who said that poverty was rising and a reassessment of the minimum wage needed to be made.

Chamber president Helga Ellul told the chamber's annual general meeting that, as stated by the Prime Minister, social issues were being addressed by the social safety net.

"It is an undeniable fact that only business and enterprise can sustain the country's safety net. But for business to do so, we must all ensure it remains competitive. At this particularly sensitive time, we need to consolidate our competitiveness," she stressed.

What Malta needed to do, she added, was to enhance the skills of its people and assist the country in attracting and sustaining better paid jobs. World competitiveness demanded that industry pay market rates and not artificially-set minimum rates.

Mrs Ellul welcomed the fact that GDP had turned positive after contracting in the first three quarters of 2009, but said these early signs of recovery needed to be viewed with caution.

She noted that last year, compensation of employees increased marginally whilst corporate profits decreased.

"This is important, it shows that, on average, employers paid the highest cost of the international recession. We need to ensure that these trends are reversed as early as possible. We must ensure that the country's productive capabilities are enhanced through either increasing our labour force or the productivity of our labour force or a combination of both," Mrs Ellul said.

"We must ensure that we the business people, are able to have enough profits to invest and arm our business with the most efficient technologies to increase productivity. As we have been stating all along, our government must ensure that it creates no unnecessary burden on the competitiveness position of our companies."

http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20100326/local/chamber-insists-that-raising-the-minimum-wage-is-not-the-way-ahead