'More weight on GDP growth needed for minimum wage'

The chairman of the Federation of Trade Unions (FTU) on Wednesday said authorities should give more weight to the growth of the SAR's economy in a new formula for calculating the minimum wage. The Executive Council on Tuesday approved recommendations to review the minimum wage every year instead of every two years, and under the new mechanism, the minimum wage would not be reduced. The new formula will take into account the consumer price index and 20 percent of the difference between the previous year’s GDP figure and economic growth in the past decade, with a cap of one percentage point. FTU chairman Kingsley Wong welcomed the change, but he said the hourly minimum wage would only increase by about HK$1 every year under the new mechanism, which is not ideal. "Grassroots workers should also be able to share the results of economic prosperity. It's too low to only include [20 percent of the GDP growth difference]. This is what the mechanism is short of," he told an RTHK radio programme. "We hope that employers, employees, officials and scholars should review the mechanism, for example, in every five years." He said calculations should include 30 percent of the GDP growth difference instead. Speaking on the same programme, the president of the Hong Kong Federation of Restaurants and Related Trades, Simon Wong, said the catering sector will not see a huge increase in operating costs because of the new mechanism. "Under the labour shortage situation, the hourly wage for the catering sector is a lot higher than the minimum wage... For temporary positions, restaurants mostly have to pay workers at least HK$50 to HK$60 per hour, and some Chinese restaurants even pay their frontline staff HK$80 or more," he said. Chief Executive John Lee, meanwhile, said on social media that the changes could protect grassroots workers. He expressed the hope that officials could work with various sectors to build a "reasonable, fair and safe" environment for workers.