Well done, Sime Darby

Most of my colleagues are wearing a smiley face this morning. Our CEO had announced yesterday that all estate workers including non-executive staff will be getting a pay rise of 20 to 30% effective 1st July, arising from a voluntary step taken by the company to increase the living standard of the employees, in the way meeting the goals set by New Economic Model.

For years, the associations of estate workers and the plantation employers have not been able to achieve a mutual agreement on the minimum wages and perhaps that’s the reason why the government have changed its strategy to let GLCs such as Sime Darby to be the initiator to increase the wages for the estate workers and hoping that the industry will follow suit. The government has no control over the private sectors and wages are by and large decided by the market force.

But through GLCs, the government can initiate some necessary measures such as what Sime Darby is doing to set a new benchmark in the way inspiring or rather forcing private sector to change. An increase of RM 200 may seem insignificant to many but it will translate into a huge sum of 88 million ringgit of additional annual expenditure on remuneration as it involved a total of 37,000 employees.

Come to think of it, even though the top management of Sime Darby is enjoying the big paycheck and all other perks, but yet, there are still those responsible for incurring billions dollars losses suffered by the company as reported over the past few years. Perhaps a RM 200 increase for workers will cheer them up for a little while but nonetheless, may still not be enough to cope with the ever increasing cost of living.

Some say this is an election gimmick. I would rather say that this is an excellent initiative for public good. For long the plantation industry has been neglecting the core of its work force, which essentially is those workers who involve in daily operations such as harvesting, evacuation, driving the tractors, spraying the weeds and so on and now hopefully with such a timely move, it would be able to attract more people to work in plantation industry which is currently facing an acute shortage of lobour.