Japan’s average minimum hourly wage should be maintained at the current level, a subcommittee of the government’s Central Minimum Wage Council decided on July 22, in a rare move amid the economic downturn due to the novel coronavirus pandemic. The subcommittee of the panel to the labor minister drew up a report showing no benchmark for a hike in regional minimum hourly wages for fiscal 2020 in consideration of the pandemic-hit economy. “It is appropriate to maintain the current level,” the report said.
Management representatives argued that the government’s state of emergency declaration over the novel coronavirus and requests for businesses to shut down temporarily to curb the spread of the virus specifically brought “a significant loss in demand.” They insisted that a wage hike would “drive small- and mid-scale companies and smaller businesses further into predicament.” Labor representatives, meanwhile, claimed that forgoing a minimum wage hike “would increase social insecurity and is tantamount to approving an economic gap” amidst the resurgence of coronavirus infections.
In the end, experts representing public interest suggested factors including that the recent surge in the number of new infections following the lifting of the state of emergency “requires caution for its effects on the economy and employment” and concluded that “it is difficult to indicate a benchmark amount and maintaining the current levels is appropriate.”
Source: Mainichi
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