Following the amendments to the Law on Minimum Wage, the employers from ORM participated in all discussions, meetings of the Economic and Social Council and consultations with the Prime Minister, the Vice Prime Minister, the Minister of Finance and the Minister of labour and social policies, as well as the representatives of the trade unions.

The last remarks on the proposed amendments to the Law on Minimum Wage refer(LMW) to the proposal to delete the words in Article 2 of the same law ‘and fulfilled normalized performance(norm)’.

We think that such a change will cause many negative repercussions, especially in the industry where, in order to maintain productivity, standardization of the performance of employees has been introduced. The disadvantages will be expressed by firing  workers and increasing the number of unemployment.
From the previous application of the LMW, comparing the statistical data on the average paid monthly net salary per employee by diferent branches, it is obvious that the provision of paragraph 2 of the law on MW was tied full-time and the fulfilled normalized performance was not an obstacle to the increase in wages In labor-intensive branches. Thus, in the period from February 2014 to March 2017, the average monthly net salary paid per employee in the 2014 in sector -production of clothing increased by 22.9%, while for the same period the average paid monthly net salary per employee in the Republic was increased only for 7.2%.
It is true that in some countries the LMW is not bound to a fulfilled standardized performance, but in all of them,LMW ranges from 30 to 40% of the average salary. In our case, with the increase of the MP to 12,000 MKD, this compared with the average wage in the textile industry is  amount to over 88%. This will cause all entrants to find themselves in a very small wage range and cause demotivation among employees who actually realize the norm and fall in productivity. In such conditions, part of the employers will try through increased working hours, with overtime hours to keep employees at work until they meet the actual norm-performance. And when by the State Labor Inspectorate this will be determined the next measure that only remains at disposal acording the Lbour code is termination of the  workers who do not realize the norm.

Regarding the proposal in Article 2 of the Law, after the words “normalized performance”, the words “according to the employer’s act” should be added. In this way, the cases will be prevented when the employer wants to abuse the use of the normalized performance in order to pay lower wages. The labor and social policy inspector can very easily determine whether there is such an employer’s act with the employer and whether in the calculation of the Nominations and salaries, the employer respects the act. Of course, through the data from the MPIN Form, the Public Revenue Office can very easily determine which are those employers in which the percentage of employees who have received a salary below 12,000 denars is larger and sends such data to the State Labour Inspectorate.

Finally, once again, we point out the fact that this is a very sensitive legal solution, which can cause huge turbulences in labor-intensive branches with big negative consequences and should therefore be adopted with full consensus of the social partners, employers, trade unions and the Government of the Republic Macedonia.