Minimum or Reasonable?
Just several days before, there were a couple of government manpower department officers department came to my company. They asked to meet our Human Resource Manager, so we sent him down there.
As like I guessed before. it was about minimum wage regulation. Not all of our employees were “properly” fulfill that regulation.
If we talk about wages, this always look like a war of interest between workers who seek out proper remuneration, and a big bad capitalist as the company who suck in all the wealth… but that’s not the case I want to write down here.
Let’s go back again to those government officer. Although I did not meet them directly (I had to do something else that time) but I managed to get some quotes about their questions (Unfortunately I did not get any recorded answer from my colleagues).
They gave us some interesting questions like this one:
Can you employ more people? We still need some more position for reducing the unemployment
There are more than 500.000 unemployed people in Jakarta now (BPS, 2007). No wonder if our government keeps pushing us to hire and employ more people.
but some of their questions amazed me was their like this one:
how far can you keep up with our regulation? 60% to 80%?
Thats question somehow told me that they already know that no way a local company like mine could keep up with all their regulations, such as minimum wage regulations, employment benefits, insurance and others.
Now I am confused… did what they say really stands for term of understanding about exempting manpower regulation for us?
How much do they really deserve…?
I tried to remember a past conversation with my friend, who’s a retailer.
He said “he was paid about $2 a day plus $4 a week for his job”
I replied him “Are you nuts? Jakarta’s minimum wage regulation is $4 a day…”
His answer “I am nuts if I pay him $4 a day… look at his jobs, he’s awful, nobody wants to employ him… He should show some grateful for working at mine”
Ok… thats my friend, perhaps he was too greedy, so I compared with my subcon, Mr. S…
he said “I paid them $85 a month”
I replied “Thats $15 below regulation, are you serious?”
he said “thats the amount I am willingly to pay… he can go to someone else, but you can see he keeps working with me and he reliefs with his remuneration”
His answer were more convincing, but I wanted to compare with my company’s competitor. So I went to meet “a person”, lets say my informant
I asked him “Working there must be fun, those people must be well paid”
he replied “no, you are wrong, they are only paid $50 a month… but the company gave them mess and feed them everyday”
I asked him again “its that so? so it might be Mr X place that paid the highest”
he answered “you are wrong again… just like the other, he pays only $50 a month”
I replied “So you mean that my people down here are overpaid”
He said “yes, kenji you are a great student at university but you still do not know anything about real world… your people are overpaid!”
soo… wait a minute… did those guys mean that If I pay based on minimum wage regulation, it’s going to be an over paid one?
And if for some industries, keeping up with all the labors and workers regulation is definitely going to be a burden and endangering them to collapse, resulting in adding more unemployment… why can’t the government adjust them to a more reasonable one?
I knew that giving low wage to people sounded like a wicked bad capitalist just like some people yelling out for… but can’t anyone see it now? unemployment are everywhere and many companies can’t keep up with the government manpower regulations…
maybe… it is just a maybe… if we change those regulation into a more “FAIR” one, not the one now that are too much siding up with employee… I mean fair rights and obligations between employers and employees, then those government officers would not have to say that they were understand and could make some exception about the breaching of those regulations.
Regulations, Rules, and Policies are not meant to be broken… and there must not be any exception for breaching one of them. I think they must to admit that that minimum is quite unreasonable 
I’m not sure what you mean by fair and reasonable… Is it fair and reasonable for you / the company, or is it fair and reasonable for your workers…?
wah itu si subcon parah amat. beginilah kalo kebanyakan pengangguran, so employers bisa suka2x, meskipun udah ada peraturan ttg minimum wage.
kebalekan di america, karyawannya yg seenak jidat. makan ati deh jd employer disini.
di neg kita ini, banyak para pencari kerja yg tidak siap kerja, artinya pasang harga terlalu tinggi u/ kualitas mereka yg rata2 belum teruji, lalu tidak siap dgn tantangan yg diberikan perusahaan.
sbnrnya byk yg butuh pegawai, tp emg keduanya sama2 blm match. bahkan akhirnya ada yg menurunkan grade — yg penting bs kerja, tp wkt dikasih tantangan sm yg hire, ga sanggup jg.
ga kelar jg kan….
@sheilla:
I think fair or reasonable is not we who decide that. It is benchmarked from others too, or should I say the industrial actual average value…
if people keep paid below those regulation, the updated one should be lower, not getting higher and higher
@dina
supply and demand rules… which one is over, that one become weaker in position
@zee
iya mbak… banyak yang berpikiran gaji itu kewajiban dipatok berdasarkan posisi, bukan berdasarkan kontribusi aktual kepada perusahaan…