"Minimum wage plan prompts hundreds of complaints", 16 July 2015

[T]he government...proposed a K3600-a-day minimum wage and opened a 14-day window for lodging any complaints over the amount. More than 200 factories from the Shwe Pyi Thar and Hlaing Thar Yar industrial zones, as well as 21 labour unions, submitted objections to the amount. Employers, largely from foreign-owned garment factories, suggested the minimum wage would be unsustainably high and will force them to close down. Unions harangued the government from the opposite end of the spectrum, holding out for the K4000-a-day wage they have been lobbying for...Minister for Labour U Aye Myint has maintained that the proposed wage is a fair starting point, and has suggested factories should be willing to accept it on a trial basis. But neither factory workers nor their bosses seemed willing to budge. “We can’t pay K3600 as the minimum wage,” said U Myint Soe, chair of the Myanmar Garment Manufacturers Association. “If the central committee fixes K3600 as the minimum wage we will have to reconsider our garment factory business...” The wage hike will also force factory owners to cut benefits currently being provided to the workers, such as meals, transportation and a bedroom, U Myint Soe said. Workers, many of whom earn a basic wage as low as K30,000 a month, said K3600 would not be enough to cover basic living expenses for a single-person household, let alone a family...The Yangon Region Committee on the Minimum Wage confirmed that the K3600 figure had been greeted with disappointment from both sides...