Never beat around the bush when you’re asking for a raise. Don’t wait until after a meeting to ‘casually’ bring it up. Schedule a time to meet with your boss with one goal in mind: broaching the pay raise.
― Randi Zuckerberg, American businesswoman
I welcome the announcement by Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim to increase the salary of civil servants.
This, according to the federal government, is the largest salary increase with the administration aiming to better the previous 13 per cent pay hike record.
Definitely, this is welcome news for current and future civil servants particularly after a crushing blow dealt to them with the government discontinuing the pension scheme for new hires.
The implementation of contract basis employment without pension for new civil servants was seen as a deal-breaker for many to join the civil service. The pay rise has somehow reinvigorated the appeal of serving the government.
I have been supporting better pay for workers, not only in the civil service but also in the private sector through a progressive wage policy.
Simply put, the cost of living and the inflation due to economic doldrums has made living on a single paying job untenable for many.
To supplement their incomes, civil servants and private sector workers were forced to get a secondary job either in the gig economy, through home-based businesses or even in direct selling, becoming agents for subscription-based products.
While overworking to put food on the table is seen as commendable or even noble in the eyes of society, in actual fact, it reflects badly on the state of the economy, which any government must shoulder some responsibility for.
With work-life balance being one of the factors in determining one’s mental health, there is a need for better efficiency as well as progressive renumeration.
If we continue to glamorise the trend of overworking to make ends meet, we would end up like Japan where the unforgiving working environment led to deaths. The term ‘karoshi’, Japanese for “death from overwork” has even been coined.
Any move to increase wages for workers in the public and private sectors is welcome as it improves quality of life, not only in terms of monetary gain but also more free time as people can make do without needing a part-time job.
But the issue lies in the motivations and implications of the pay hike. Many are alluding to a further increase in living costs due to the salary increment.
The logic is that when income standards are raised, the price of items would follow suit. More things would be in demand and the shortage in the supplies of these items would lead to higher prices.
That is one of the implications. It is an inevitable unintended consequence and while inflation would rise regardless over time, it is something that can be accepted.
However, on the flip side, there is this fear among the people that the sudden salary raise is a precursor to something which most are dreading for.
It can be translated as a signal that the government is moving closer with their plans to remove the blanket subsidy on fuel and implement a targeted subsidy scheme.
If this happens, then the increase in wages for civil servants would be an exercise in futility as it doesn’t mean anything anymore.
Living standards and quality of life are still stagnated as an increase in fuel prices would trigger prices of other goods to skyrocket and for lack of a better word, fuelling the inflation itself.
While the Madani government would argue that the B40 and the people who are entitled for subsidies will receive their due, the counterargument to that is that price of goods won’t suddenly become cheaper to them.
When the subsidy recipients go to a mamak shop to order roti kosong, which due to inflated prices could be RM3 per piece, the fellow who gets subsidy from PADU won’t be paying only RM1.50 for the same roti kosong.
All of us will be paying RM3 for roti kosongs, subsidy recipients or otherwise. This is one of the real-world implications. The world doesn’t cater to subsidy recipients, it serves the entire population!
Of course, there is still this issue that the private sector has yet to provide their response to the government’s pay rise policy. Definitely, business owners and companies are worried that their employees would be pressuring them to do the same.
If there are salary increases across the board – public and private sectors – which is optimistic to say the least, with the subsidy removal and impending inflation, the question remains on whether it makes any difference to living quality.
Worst case is that our income levels are lopsided, while the government has restructured its renumeration system, the private sector is stuck with the current pay scale, which is none.
This will create an income disparity and the impact of it – the inflation brought about by the subsidy removal will affect the private sector workers.
So, I say to the prime minister and the people in government, two things. First is to push for a progressive wage policy whereby the pay scale in the private sector will be regulated.
Second is to defer the implementation of targeted subsidy or blanket subsidy removal as it would make the current situation worse.
I hope the people in this government would learn from the mistake of removing GST and replacing it with SST which in the end doesn’t serve anyone.
The civil servant pay rise can be seen as a political gambit. Anwar is hedging his bets and when inflation strikes, this government can claim it helped the civil servants offset the higher living costs.
No doubt, the civil servants are an important electorate group, but then again, if the government proceeds with its plan to remove the blanket subsidy, it would cost it the next election.
Regardless of what their next move is, Anwar and the government must realise and understand the real-world implications of their policies.
The government which is struggling to win public approval could not afford to put a foot wrong.
The views expressed here are those of the columnist and do not necessarily represent the views of New Sarawak Tribune.
