Is a 300-dinar minimum wage still viable?
16 June 2011
Read by 1619 persons
Samir Messali writes - Young Tunisians continue to demand work that allows them to live with dignity. This will certainly not be a job paying 300 dinars per month.
At a recent meeting, Abdelfatteh Mourou, lawyer, founding member of the Ennahdha movement and imam preacher, allowed himself, while mentioning accusations of double-speak against a political party, to ironically recount the story of a young Tunisian who hides the reality of his true income from his fiancée by inviting her to a chic dinner at 60 dinars per menu, so that once married she will discover that the gentleman's salary is 300 dinars rather than 3,000.
Can Tunisia become the second Switzerland?
I presume it is Mr. Mourou's imam side that allowed him to tell this story that has a moral. For I cannot imagine a politician superficially mentioning a real problem that the next government will have to solve.
Indeed, a minimum wage of 300 dinars cannot meet the needs of a Tunisian household. And Mr. Mourou, who knows the country well, knows that this salary is barely enough for the needs of a single person living with his parents. And it is no coincidence that thousands of our young people, at the risk of their lives, try to cross the Mediterranean in search of a minimum wage 10 times higher.
The success of economic policy is an essential condition for the success of any new government. Reducing unemployment is an inescapable objective, but in addition to job creation, it is above all the quality of employment, its remuneration and its stability that matter even more.
While waiting to discover the economic programs of the political parties, we are, for the moment, content with wishes or, at best, objectives and orientations that are more or less precise.
Some want to make Tunisia the second Switzerland, others want to apply the economic model of Scandinavian countries. It is legitimate to have such ambitions but we must not lose sight of the fact that Norway, on a global scale, is the sixth largest exporter of oil and the third largest exporter of natural gas. That the Swedish group Volvo annually pays a corporation tax equivalent to one billion dinars. That the Swiss giant Nestlé made a profit of 34 billion Swiss francs in 2010, equivalent to our GDP for the year 2009. And that finally the Finnish Nokia distributes in Finland an annual salary mass equal to two billion dinars.
The economic models in question
It is therefore very easy to conduct a generous and equitable social policy when one is a sparsely populated country like Tunisia. But must one also have an industrial fabric as efficient as Sweden's or natural resources as abundant as Norway's?
I add to this that the four countries I have just named have a common point that is not unrelated to their economic and social situation. Indeed, in the ranking of the best universities in the world, among the top 100, there are three Swiss universities, three Swedish universities, one Norwegian and one Finnish, while the first Tunisian university is ranked 6719th.
Each Tunisian political party carries a societal project that it considers to be the best for our country. Whatever the content of this project, we must not forget that the young Tunisians who took to the streets before January 14, and sometimes at the cost of their lives, chanted loudly the following slogan: "Work is a right... Band of thieves".
If the revolution has made it possible to put the band of thieves out of harm's way, pending their trial, our young people, increasingly numerous, continue to demand work that would allow them to live with dignity.
This will certainly not be a job paying 300 dinars per month.
Published June 16, 2011
Posted online June 16, 2011
kapitalis.com
At a recent meeting, Abdelfatteh Mourou, lawyer, founding member of the Ennahdha movement and imam preacher, allowed himself, while mentioning accusations of double-speak against a political party, to ironically recount the story of a young Tunisian who hides the reality of his true income from his fiancée by inviting her to a chic dinner at 60 dinars per menu, so that once married she will discover that the gentleman's salary is 300 dinars rather than 3,000.
Can Tunisia become the second Switzerland?
I presume it is Mr. Mourou's imam side that allowed him to tell this story that has a moral. For I cannot imagine a politician superficially mentioning a real problem that the next government will have to solve.
Indeed, a minimum wage of 300 dinars cannot meet the needs of a Tunisian household. And Mr. Mourou, who knows the country well, knows that this salary is barely enough for the needs of a single person living with his parents. And it is no coincidence that thousands of our young people, at the risk of their lives, try to cross the Mediterranean in search of a minimum wage 10 times higher.
The success of economic policy is an essential condition for the success of any new government. Reducing unemployment is an inescapable objective, but in addition to job creation, it is above all the quality of employment, its remuneration and its stability that matter even more.
While waiting to discover the economic programs of the political parties, we are, for the moment, content with wishes or, at best, objectives and orientations that are more or less precise.
Some want to make Tunisia the second Switzerland, others want to apply the economic model of Scandinavian countries. It is legitimate to have such ambitions but we must not lose sight of the fact that Norway, on a global scale, is the sixth largest exporter of oil and the third largest exporter of natural gas. That the Swedish group Volvo annually pays a corporation tax equivalent to one billion dinars. That the Swiss giant Nestlé made a profit of 34 billion Swiss francs in 2010, equivalent to our GDP for the year 2009. And that finally the Finnish Nokia distributes in Finland an annual salary mass equal to two billion dinars.
The economic models in question
It is therefore very easy to conduct a generous and equitable social policy when one is a sparsely populated country like Tunisia. But must one also have an industrial fabric as efficient as Sweden's or natural resources as abundant as Norway's?
I add to this that the four countries I have just named have a common point that is not unrelated to their economic and social situation. Indeed, in the ranking of the best universities in the world, among the top 100, there are three Swiss universities, three Swedish universities, one Norwegian and one Finnish, while the first Tunisian university is ranked 6719th.
Each Tunisian political party carries a societal project that it considers to be the best for our country. Whatever the content of this project, we must not forget that the young Tunisians who took to the streets before January 14, and sometimes at the cost of their lives, chanted loudly the following slogan: "Work is a right... Band of thieves".
If the revolution has made it possible to put the band of thieves out of harm's way, pending their trial, our young people, increasingly numerous, continue to demand work that would allow them to live with dignity.
This will certainly not be a job paying 300 dinars per month.
Published June 16, 2011
Posted online June 16, 2011
kapitalis.com
