Entrepreneurs Ask Thai Govt To Postpone Minimum Wage Rise

[kennedy]

If you have never owned your own business, but just worked for some else, this increase sounds like nothing. Remember, you are now in a different country. You can not expect to come here and dictate what they should pay employees based on what you earn in other countries. That is not a reasonable expectation. If Thailand is not competitive with it's neighboring countries, it will lose jobs to them. Do you really believe that an unemployed Thai worker is better off than a employed worker? Until you have had to meet a payroll weekly, keep your thoughts on how to run a business to yourself, or step up to the plate an actually employ people. Employers do more for providing for their employess, more than employees that just accept a wage or salary. Money for salaries does not just fall out of the sky. You were lucky if someone else was smart enough, and in the right industry, to provide for you. You also must have added value. The employers have asked that at least the employees getting the maximum minimum wage have at least a 4th grade education, and that was rejected. What more do you want?

I pay the old man who cuts my grass 200 bht for one hour work.

[finnomick1]

Thanit Sorat should try and live the life of an agricultural labourer who still only gets paid 150 baht per day and see how long he lasts. This year alone has seen the retail price of rice increase by 30% +. The 400 baht subsidy for electricity has been stopped ( if your bill was under 400 baht per month, you didn't have to pay it ). The price of 91 petrol is about 43 baht per litre in rural areas. If you could actually afford an old motorbike, it's the dearest fuel for you too. Come on Khun Sorat, let's see how you can manage to live and feed the family on 300 baht a day let alone 150 baht a day !

[waza]

Thanit Sorat should try and live the life of an agricultural labourer who still only gets paid 150 baht per day and see how long he lasts. This year alone has seen the retail price of rice increase by 30% +. The 400 baht subsidy for electricity has been stopped ( if your bill was under 400 baht per month, you didn't have to pay it ). The price of 91 petrol is about 43 baht per litre in rural areas. If you could actually afford an old motorbike, it's the dearest fuel for you too. Come on Khun Sorat, let's see how you can manage to live and feed the family on 300 baht a day let alone 150 baht a day !

Plus the free hospital cover has been dropped in favour of the 30 baht per visit.

[Thai at Heart]

Thanit Sorat should try and live the life of an agricultural labourer who still only gets paid 150 baht per day and see how long he lasts. This year alone has seen the retail price of rice increase by 30% +. The 400 baht subsidy for electricity has been stopped ( if your bill was under 400 baht per month, you didn't have to pay it ). The price of 91 petrol is about 43 baht per litre in rural areas. If you could actually afford an old motorbike, it's the dearest fuel for you too. Come on Khun Sorat, let's see how you can manage to live and feed the family on 300 baht a day let alone 150 baht a day !

Plus the free hospital cover has been dropped in favour of the 30 baht per visit.

If it helps to stop utterly frivolous vists, isn't that a good thing from an economic point if view?

[waza]

Thanit Sorat should try and live the life of an agricultural labourer who still only gets paid 150 baht per day and see how long he lasts. This year alone has seen the retail price of rice increase by 30% +. The 400 baht subsidy for electricity has been stopped ( if your bill was under 400 baht per month, you didn't have to pay it ). The price of 91 petrol is about 43 baht per litre in rural areas. If you could actually afford an old motorbike, it's the dearest fuel for you too. Come on Khun Sorat, let's see how you can manage to live and feed the family on 300 baht a day let alone 150 baht a day !

Plus the free hospital cover has been dropped in favour of the 30 baht per visit.

If it helps to stop utterly frivolous vists, isn't that a good thing from an economic point if view?

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

[Thai at Heart]

Thanit Sorat should try and live the life of an agricultural labourer who still only gets paid 150 baht per day and see how long he lasts. This year alone has seen the retail price of rice increase by 30% +. The 400 baht subsidy for electricity has been stopped ( if your bill was under 400 baht per month, you didn't have to pay it ). The price of 91 petrol is about 43 baht per litre in rural areas. If you could actually afford an old motorbike, it's the dearest fuel for you too. Come on Khun Sorat, let's see how you can manage to live and feed the family on 300 baht a day let alone 150 baht a day !

Plus the free hospital cover has been dropped in favour of the 30 baht per visit.

If it helps to stop utterly frivolous vists, isn't that a good thing from an economic point if view?

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

I don't disagree. I wondered why on earth they re-instituted it, and found a paper somewhere, that it is a massive issue in many "free" systems that even instituting a small amount, means that of course if people are sick they will still go, but that by making the service completely free, there is a large amount of frivolous visits that aren't necessary.

[waza]

My understanding is that re-instituting the 30 baht payment just creates another layer bureaucrats required to manage it and increases the costs to the hospitals beyond the benefits.

[Thai at Heart]

My understanding is that re-instituting the 30 baht payment just creates another layer bureaucrats required to manage it and increases the costs to the hospitals beyond the benefits.

Well that is what I understood also, so I couldn't grasp why on earth they put it back in. Turns out, that, a lot of economic study of free healthcare systems discusses the possibility of instituting a nominal fee to access the system to prevent frivolous application. Of course elsewhere in the world, they would make it sufficient to at least cover the cost of managing the system.

So seems someone somewhere read something about it and instituted it coz it seemed like a good idea to solve a problem without considering the consequence. Sounds like typical way to implement something in the current climate right?

[IsaanUSA]

I don't understand why this would effect SMEs any different than it would effect any other company. I thought the minimum wage increase effected everybody. (Sorry if I used effect/affect wrong)

[lizardtongue]

Each factory is likely to face losses of about Bt6-7 million per month.

Does that mean Bt 6-7 million of profit loss? If so it would follow that it will be money coming out of the pockets of the owner(s), just goes to show how much exploitation goes on!

I know for a fact that some companies (producing sports clothing r export) based in Isan the workers are being paid Bt230 a day, there is no choice as to working overtime they are told that they must work extra hours at Bt 40 per hour! So most days they are earning above Bt 300.

Wouldn't it be simple to raise the price of the product by Bt 40 and absorb the Bt30

The workers have been informed that once the lease is up for renewal in 3 yrs the company will attempt to relocate to Cambodia, the staff have been given the choice of also relocating, but I bet there will not be any 'relocating packages' !

Total greed and exploitation.

[ags83]

Minimum wage laws do not increase the average wealth of the people in a free market. In a free market all they would do is create unemployment. It's kind of complicated though because most of these businesses are probably not in a free market and I imaging it takes bribery and powerful friends/etc to be a,say, developer. If it's not a free market then there may actually be some level of 'unfair' profit taking going on..... which is of course due to government to begin with.

It's just so easy for governments to come along and look like the good guys by calling for things like minimum wage, when in reality it is these parasites keeping the people in poverty. Real entrepreneurs do create jobs and more importantly wealth for a society. Anyway, end of my poorly written rant.

[finnomick1]

Thanit Sorat should try and live the life of an agricultural labourer who still only gets paid 150 baht per day and see how long he lasts. This year alone has seen the retail price of rice increase by 30% +. The 400 baht subsidy for electricity has been stopped ( if your bill was under 400 baht per month, you didn't have to pay it ). The price of 91 petrol is about 43 baht per litre in rural areas. If you could actually afford an old motorbike, it's the dearest fuel for you too. Come on Khun Sorat, let's see how you can manage to live and feed the family on 300 baht a day let alone 150 baht a day !

Plus the free hospital cover has been dropped in favour of the 30 baht per visit.

If it helps to stop utterly frivolous vists, isn't that a good thing from an economic point if view?

it would be even better if there was an alternative to going to hospital and seeing a much overworked doctor if all you've got is a cold, and a repeat prescription service would save time too

Edited November 6, 2012 by finnomick1