AMMAN — The Security House
Association for Social Protection expressed its “deep disappointment” regarding
the decision made on Thursday by the Tripartite Committee for Labor Affairs to
keep Jordan’s
minimum wage at JD260, calling the decision “illegal”, Khaberni
reported.
اضافة اعلان
“This decision has disappointed us and the
more than 170,000 Jordanian workers who receive wages at or below
minimum wage,” the association said in a statement.
Referring to a decision by the committee in
February of 2020 to index
minimum wage to inflation as of January 2022, the
association commented: “It is unfortunate that the government retracted a
decision that was taken by a committee empowered by the Labor Law and published
in the Official Gazette.”
Due to these official steps, that decision
“was assumed to have become binding and enforceable, but it seems that the
government, unfortunately, has favored proprietors of funds and businesses at
the expense of workers.”
“They are waiting for any increase — even a
small one — in their wages, (and the one proposed) is almost negligible, hardly
equivalent to the inflation rate recorded in the Kingdom for the year 2022,
which reached 4.2 percent,” the statement said, cautioning that the decision to
maintain
minimum wage at JD260 “would increase the number of poor Jordanian
workers and plunge them below the poverty line.”
Calling for reconsideration of
‘retrogressive decision’The association questioned: “Is this reversal
in the interest of the country and the national economy, and does increasing
poverty among this group of workers serve the productive process? What message
does the government want to send to the public in general — and the working
class in particular — when it backs down from a decision that was taken in
accordance with the provisions of the law?”
The association called on the leaders of
the General Federation of Jordanian Trade Unions, which is represented within
the tripartite committee, to state their position on the decision to back down
from raising the
minimum wage.
“We call on all leaders of the federation
to submit their resignations immediately for their failure to defend the rights
of the workers they represent,” the statement read.
“We believe that the retrogressive decision
taken by the committee today is illegal, because it did not take into account
the rate of inflation when considering the
minimum wage as stipulated in
Article 52 of the Labor Law,” it continued.
The association also called on the Lower House,
human rights organizations, and civil society organizations to “carry out their
duty and pressure the government by all democratic and legal means to implement
the decision to raise the minimum wage, rejecting the decision of the
Tripartite Committee for Labor Affairs issued today”.
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