There is no urgent need for a minimum wage in Uganda

Upholding and respecting these major rights of Uganda’s workers ought to be a priority. In addition, chronic challenges of absenteeism, poor attitude at work, low productivity and corruption/bribery deserve attention.

There has been a growing debate about the thorny issue of a minimum wage in Uganda and President Museveni added more firewood in the fire on Labour Day when he argued that this was not a priority at the moment and that the government is focused on lowering costs of doing business to attract more investors. This comes on the backdrop of Speaker Rebecca Kadaga granting MP Arinaitwe Rwakajara leave to go and draft the Minimum Wage Bill on February 21. According to the draft Bill, the proposed figure is Shs250,000 per month.

There have been strong opinions from both sides of the debate. Advocates such as Martin Luther King, Franklin D. Roosevelt and many others have in the past seriously advocated for minimum wage across the world. On the other side of the argument, William B. Aumol and Alan Blinder contend that “The primary consequence of the minimum wage law is not an increase in the incomes of the least skilled workers but a restriction of their employment opportunities.” Others have argued that a minimum wage law is just one of those ways of government contemptuously controlling its citizens’ actions and muzzling their ability to choose.

While President Museveni was busy challenging the minimum wage crusade, in neighbouring Kenya, President Uhuru Kenyatta was announcing an increment of the minimum wage by 14 per cent. Shortly before the President announced this increment, his deputy, William Ruto, had emphasised the need to improve working conditions of Kenya’s labour force, fighting inflation and exploring innovative ways of reducing the costs of living, curtailing escalating food prices, which was accounting for more than 40 per cent of a person’s incomes, improving free medical services to relieve the pressure on peoples incomes whilst ensuring a healthy work force, and such other interventions.

The rationale of the interventions is that rather than setting a minimum wage, which leads to an almost automatic rise in prices which would inevitably stagnate a person’s purchasing power regardless of the earning, these mechanisms would lower the costs of living, which would benefit all citizens alike and raise purchasing power when prices drop further.

A minimum wage law in Uganda would ensure that employers pay employees higher wages for those who were earning below the set wage. Economists have argued that minimum wage law would cost the economy thousands of jobs, raise prices of final products/services, volunteerism/internship/part-time workers, etc .,will have their opportunities seriously limited, low-paying jobs - an entry point for most workers - would cease, small scale businesses would easily be pushed out of business meaning loss of jobs, businesses would fail to achieve greater efficiency and unprecedented lay-off of workers in the interim.
A straightforward analysis of Uganda’s work force challenges reveals glaring issues that ought to be addressed before we consider minimum wage.

Issues such as lack of appointment letters/contracts, sexual and other forms of exploitation at work place, medical cover, protective wears, delayed/irregular payments of wages, regulating termination of all workers, non-payment of work benefits, observing and respecting annual/maternity and other forms of leave, growth of labour unions, among others, must be addressed first. Upholding and respecting these major rights of Uganda’s workers ought to be a priority.

In addition, chronic challenges of absenteeism, poor attitude at work, low productivity and corruption/bribery deserve attention. If I may add, these do not have any obvious relation with pay.
What we need now is to raise our productivity and develop better skills to automatically attract higher pay and demand the establishment of a salary’s commission to check the disparities.

Mr Masake is a human rights defender. mskmas@yahoo.co.uk