AMMAN — President of the General
Federation of Jordanian Trade Unions (
GFJTU) Mazen Maaytah has urged the
government to follow through on a previous decision made by the public-private Tripartite
Commission for Labor Affairs to index the statutory minimum wage to inflation,
the Jordan News Agency, Petra, reported.
اضافة اعلان
In early 2022, the commission, which
comprises the Ministry of Labor, the GFJTU, and the Jordan Chambers of Industry
and Commerce, decided to postpone until 2023the decision to index the Kingdom’s
minimum wage, which currently stands at JD260 for
Jordanians and JD245 for
non-Jordanians according to the International Labor Organization.
The postponement was due to
pandemic-related issues.
According to Maaytah, the decision “cannot be delayed any further” because the current minimum wage is “insufficient” to provide a decent standard of living…
According to Maaytah, the decision “cannot
be delayed any further” because the current minimum wage is “insufficient” to
provide a decent standard of living and is not in proportion to poverty line
figures.
Under the decision, the minimum wage for
those of non-Jordanian nationalities would also be raised to JD260 per month.
Meeting basic needsAhmad Awad, head of the Jordan Labor Watch,
had told
Jordan News at the time of the decision in February
2022 that the agreement the commission had reached not to raise the minimum
wage in 2022 would “deepen poverty levels on the one hand, and weaken the
chances of reviving the economy on the other”.
Awad explained that two main criteria must
be taken into account in order to raise the minimum wage: families’ poverty
levels and dependency rate.
Based on these two criteria, he said, the
minimum wage in the Kingdom should fall somewhere between JD400 and JD480, “in
order for an individual to meet his and his family members’ basic needs”.
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