Mr Vayeshnoi - First Meeting of the Wages Council Members
Jul 7, 2008, 13:05

Mr Lekh Ram Vayeshnoi,
Minister for Labour, Industrial Relations, Employment, Local Government, Urban Development, Housing & Environment

First Meeting of the Wages Council Members

JJ’s On The Park
Friday, 4th July 2008, 10.00 AM


The Chairperson of the Wages Councils, Father Kevin Barr and Members of the Ten Wages Councils. I welcome you to the briefing this morning which will introduce you to the important task of setting wages and other terms and conditions of workers in the unorganized sector.

Allow me, at this juncture to impress upon you the magnitude and importance of the task that you have been challenged with. You have been chosen on behalf of the interim government to perform a delicate task; that of setting the terms and conditions of the majority of the workers of this country. In fact, you will be looking after more than 60% of the working population and at a time when the economy is stagnant and going down due to the sudden rise in oil prices and other factors in the global economy.

Your task is quite different from that of your predecessors who were blessed with a vibrant economy and who were allowed to benchmark with a current union rate. You do not have that luxury.

Under the leadership of Father Kevin Barr you have to tread carefully. You cannot kill the goose that will be laying the golden eggs. You have to work together in partnership for at the end of the day both the employer and the workers will be judged by the level of productivity and quality achieved.

It is therefore vital for the survival of businesses that any increase in wages is relative to the ability of the employer to sustain that increase. If that cannot be done than we cannot realize our vision of reducing the decent work deficit for there cannot be decent wages if there is no work.

It is therefore important that in your deliberations you do not lose sight of the beneficiaries of any wage increase or improvement in working conditions. These are the husbands and wives the workers have to feed and the children they have to send to school the next day.

I urge you to conduct your deliberations with dignity and with due diligence by doing your own investigations and researches to enable you to do justice to the task entrusted to you.

Generally, wage setting in Fiji is not regulated as the social partners play a central role and Government has an overseering part only. What the Government has done is to introduce process improvement methods in the wages regulation orders to shift the culture towards quality improvements.

This is why the independent members have an important role to play. They both have a balancing role and a pushing role. They can influence decisions by their vote and they can direct the focus of any discussions to a particular issue because of their perceived non partisan role.

The Chairperson will be setting the criteria for wage setting and cue should be taken from the civil service where it is going to be productivity driven and no longer based on cost of living adjustment (COLA).

With regards to the hours of work the Employment Relations Promulgation 2007 has set the parameters specifying the two band hours of 45 hours x a 5 day week and 48 hours x a 6 day week and the working of overtime after those specified hours.

In the Employment Relations (Administration) Regulations 2008, Government ensures that the employers and the workers representatives in the wages councils are responsible for deciding the work arrangements for workers and employers in places and circumstances where they cannot strictly adhere to the ceiling on the number of hours to be worked.

Responsibility is now accorded to the wages councils since Government recognizes the important roles played by the social partners in the economic and social life of the country and the people of Fiji.

In a way, because of the Employment Relations Promulgation 2007 and the Labour Management Consultation and Cooperation Committee Regulations 2008, your work may be made easier as it is expected that negotiations will be done in good faith and that consultations have been carried out to the extreme.

To conclude, I must share with you that Government is committed to reactivating the Tripartite Forum and hopefully that will map the pathway to the smooth operation of the ten wages councils.

I thank you for your attention and wish you a happy briefing and a fruitful deliberation.



-End-