A round of meetings kicked off today as part of the national dialogue with the entrepreneurial community, as well as other stakeholders to discuss the need for new pay rise in the country’s private sector, where a binding 40,000 lek minimum wage rate is set to enter into force as of April 1.
The increase in the bottom wage dictate requires also an average monthly salary rise due to take place as of April to balance the wage rate pyramid.
Albania ranked last in the region for the minimum wage rate, but with the latest increase the country jumps to the third position on a par with North Macedonia, while it outdoes Kosovo and Bosnia and Herzegovina.
“We should care and evaluate the Albanian workers like being the apple of our eye and we should help them at any cost. The worker is the most important thing,” Prime Minister Edi Rama said, urging entrepreneurs to join and share same opinion.
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Hello everyone! We decided to hold this meeting, the first in a series of gatherings as part of a process we are seeking to turn into a national dialogue with the business and entrepreneurial community, as well as other stakeholders and entire society, as we are now standing at very critical crossroads and the entrepreneurship is now seeing for itself the pitfall it has dug out over the years as they now face shortages of workforce and skilled employees.
We will go on with the dialogue precisely as a process against labor exploitation and abuse of people in the workplace for profit. For many years now, the capitalist relations in Albania have been mostly based on labor exploitation and undeclared earnings by entrepreneurs, usually much higher than the declared ones.
We haven’t had planned the minimum wage increase, because such a move is not a matter of what one wishes. Many comment and claim that the monthly bottom wage should be around 80,000 or 90,000 lek. But why 80,000 or 90,000 lek? I think the minimum wage should be EUR 1200. But as I said this is not a matter of what one wishes, but it is a matter of competitiveness, productivity, the market’s capacity and the national economy’s capacities.
We wish to deliver on a process and if the collective agreements are an unimaginable farce in Albania today, such a reality should and will be altered.
Therefore, time is high for the entrepreneurial community to become aware and take significant steps forward and time is high for us to strongly push for further pay hikes after setting the minimum wage of 40,000 lek that, for the sake of truth, is at this rate because we don’t wish to hurt production, but the main problem in the manufacturing sector in particular is that the entrepreneurial community has to change its mindset and logics not only in terms of wages, not only in terms of the treatment of employees, but also in terms of training, in terms of motivation and in terms of research and in terms of necessary modernization.
In the meantime, in addition to certain trades, technology and IT specialists and teachers, we have included other categories, a number of other groups of students, other categories of mathematics, engineering, and so on.
The best-performing students will receive a minimum wage. Their scholarship in important university branches will be worth the minimum wage and today the minimum wage is 40,000 lek and they will receive 40,000 lek, because only this way, we can take the country to a whole new level, when all the foundations have been laid, but we should seek to move forward faster and firmly.
I visited the tourism trade fair in Berlin. Around 84% of hotel facilities and tourism resorts are booked from May to October. I don’t know the booking rate today. The demand is exponentially high, but tourism industry needs not only hotels and resorts, but it also needs restaurants and skilled workers. Tourism needs workforce and Albanian entrepreneurs should figure out that they can’t offer a 300,000 lek pay to a sanitation worker in Himare and Dhërmi, because she is a local resident, while offering 1000 euros to workers coming from Bali and Philippines. It can’t work like that. We must value the Albanian employee like being the apple of our eye and we should help them at any cost. The worker is the most important thing.
The female workers who have been hired since the 90s and who have received a minimum wage and have been exploited by forcing them to work hard seven days a week, working in three shifts, but they are now about to retire. But who is going to replace them? Are they going to replace them by hiring tik-tok girls?
Do you think these girls would take up jobs in clothing and apparel sector and receive a monthly salary of 40,000 lek? On the other hand, you claim that 40,000 lek in monthly pay is too much. But this is not about the monthly wage, it is more than that. It is about changing the whole system by transiting to a closed loop cycle and the Made in Albania brand.
We will follow the suit of other countries too. We will certainly import foreign workers, because we can’t afford what Germany affords.
Germany is unable to find young Germans and meet all its labor market needs. However, we can definitely find young Albanians and we can convince them to return back home if we offer them an opportunity to lead a career and build their lives here.
I am not asking you to set equally high salaries like the ones in Germany, because this is impossible, but workers should definitely receive a decent pay to cover all the living cost and make the ends meet by the end of month, even by receiving a lower wage than one would earn by working in Germany.
We are exploring ways to increase the average monthly pay, as the bottom wage is now close to the average wage rate. With the minimum wage going up so quickly it may distort the balance. To this end, we will first announce a balanced hike of the wages and we are mulling a new scheme of all wages. It is absolutely very difficult but it is doable and it will be done.
I would like to issue the same call to you and you should increase your workers’ salaries. The whole business community must do it. They should not exploit the employees! That time is over!
Thank you!
