A 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 today went on at the company Fital Sh.p.k, part of Albania’s manufacturing industry with around 1000 employees, where Prime Minister Edi Rama met with workers and the executives of the company, renowned for implementation of a continued pay rise policy and decent treatment of its workers.

A binding 40,000 lek minimum wage rate is set to enter into force as of April 1.

PM Rama underlined that fresh government measures will follow, siding with workers to collaborate with responsible entrepreneurs in a bid to combat a mindset of labor exploitation.

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Thank you very much for having me and the hospitality and I think it is very much convenient for you to stop working and rest a bit!

However, it is extremely crucial for us to keep on communicating and we will keep doing so persistently to discuss a situation when it is more imperative than ever before for the private sector wages to go up.

Of course, wages are a directly productivity-related issue and the wages level is eventually related to the prices, which in turn are related to the products quality and the market, and any pay increase exceeding this relation would definitely lead to bankruptcy.

The same goes for the public sector wages. However, the question one might ask is:”Does the current level of the private sector wages really reflects the productivity rate or they simply mirror an extreme capitalist approach, since we have chosen this system ourselves and we are not questioning the system at all and the capitalism’s logic is that is what leads whole activity of this system.

We happen to frequently come across the saying: “We have vacancies, yet we fail to fill them because we lack skilled specialists.” However, the saying has now gone a step further. It is no longer “we have vacancies, but we lack specialists.” Instead that claim goes as follows: “We have vacancies, but we lack workers to take up jobs.” In other words, we lack an ordinary workforce. Such a situation requires a reaction and swift actions, certainly starting with the workers’ pay and we believe, and this is the reason why we are here today, because this is a company that doesn’t need me to deliver this speech, although it should definitely hike its workers’ salaries. However, this is a company that didn’t wait for the government to increase the bottom monthly wage, but it has itself set a higher minimum wage than the one set by the government. An initial group of 300 employees of this company earn a monthly net salary of 500,000 lek.

So, we are visiting a company here, fortunately enough not the only one, which by setting its example has proved the theory that if the minimum wage goes up the industry would go bankrupt wrong. Such a theory should end. The logic in the mind of the Albanian entrepreneurs and capitalists that workers should be extremely exploited should end. What we are now doing and which we will accompany with new measures is precisely siding with the workers to fight together with responsible entrepreneurs the logic of extreme labor exploitation.

Albania cannot make further progress and we wouldn’t be able to move to the new heights we wish to move, and we will definitely do, with the idea that we can offer a cheaper labor force than the ones in other countries. It does no longer decide development, because such a policy actually hits the very backbone of the economy, which is precisely the workforce. This would decline the labor and workforce capacity and we cannot accept that the minimum wage of 40.000 lek as of April be at the same level in the construction sector.

This is because that is primarily not a decent wage, but just extreme labor exploitation.

Second, because this is not the true case vis-à-vis the entire financial and economic cycle of the construction sector. As I already said, it doesn’t reflect productivity, but it is merely a reflection of labor exploitation.

We decided to increase the minimum wage and such a move forces us to increase other wage levels too.

We will announce more new measures. We will keep massively funding the physicians’ graduation cost if they commit to serve and deliver health care to their folks for a certain amount of time, because we can’t use the taxpayers’ money to provide financial assistance to medical students so that they can then leave the country to deliver care to German people.

The reason why the government funds higher education studies and covers the student costs and expenses is that these students can serve the people here and so that the government can fulfill the goals of the state itself and the missions and functions of the public service systems, but first, the minimum wage, be it that doctors pay or other targeted salaries we plan to increase, as we have previously done with the salaries of judges and prosecutors.

However, we are fully aware this is insufficient and it is for this reason that we are conducting an in-depth and thorough analysis and we will soon publicly announce a plan on further wages hike and if we today set the region’s highest pay level for the specialist doctors, we should do the same in every sector and this company has set an example for everyone to lead, starting with tax liabilities it pays, the social and health insurance contributions it pays. That’s why we will visit every other company, because these entrepreneurs are our allies.

The last to note is that we will do whatever it takes to make sure that workers have their say. However, we can’t replace the trade unions and their role.

Workers need protection, even in cases when an entrepreneur could be the best possible one and it is not the entrepreneur who can guarantee such a protection, but they can gain such protection primarily by being informed about the rights granted by law.

On the other hand, they are aware that law provides them protection and that an entrepreneur cannot fire a worker without paying all the damages. We know about painful cases with entrepreneurs providing cash payment to workers. However, unreported wages would deprive workers of their social and health insurance contributions.

We are here to discuss all these issues with you and we will keep discussing because, after all, this is the reason we have been voted for, namely to directly improve the citizens’ lives and not just improve infrastructure, kindergartens, schools and hospitals, but also improve this work relation and make sure that people receive higher wages and on regular basis. This is our whole goal.