YOURSAY | ‘Work hard and smart. The universe has its way of paying you the dividends.’
Increase the starting salary for graduates ASAP!
Anonymous #97901717: I agree that graduate pay is extremely low especially with so much inflationary pressures. However, salary in a highly-linked international economy is subjected to competitive pressures.
Twenty years ago, Malaysia was a leader among the emerging economies. Our peers were likely to be countries like Taiwan, South Korea and Singapore. These countries have moved up the value chain, not just manufacturing. And as a result, their graduates have higher salary.
Today, Malaysia is just a manufacturing base such that a company can move to another country if the cost is not right.
Our peers are now countries like Vietnam, Indonesia and Thailand. Hence, the pressure to compare cost to these countries. It is painful but this becomes the new normal to measure our costs, and that filters down to our graduate salary.
If Malaysia does not get out of its place in the value chain (which is currently at the bottom), we can be sure that it will stay stagnant no matter what gross national income (GNI) numbers that are reported.
Wira: We all know the answer why salaries cannot go up. Higher wages without corresponding improvements in productivity is an invitation to disaster.
In many occasions in the past, Dr Mahathir Mohamad refused to increase the salaries of civil servants because he correctly argued that controlling inflation in this country was more important that giving higher wages for the same job.
The present set of kleptocratic leaders are clueless as to what they should do to pull the country up. As long as rural Malaysia is afraid of change, the country is doomed.
Vijay47: Good article, Zan Azlee. I must congratulate you that your head is screwed on right.
From a young age, you saved your money to buy a car and a house. Ahh! Those were the days when young folk were not distracted by fancy smartphones costing an arm and a leg.
Headhunter: Just compare the ringgit to the Singapore dollar and one would realise where we are now.
The current young working generation has to depend very much on their parents for financial support, especially for major expenditures like transport and housing.
Malaysians used to boast that we were almost a "fully-developed nation". Just look at us now, a nation going south with little sign of better things to come.
Gaji Buta: If you have three people hired in civil service to do the work of one person, then the salary will naturally be one-third of that expected for that job.
The private sector then uses this low civil service salary as justification to also keep their salaries down.
The Analyser: To increase the salaries of raw graduates means having to increase the salaries of all graduates across the nation.
The alternative is to have the ludicrous situation where a worker of three years’ experience receives less than a raw graduate. The whole Malaysian wage structure/labour situation is totally out of balance and totally out of control.
This country has got itself into a huge mess as governments pander to both religion and wealthy businessmen with no overall plan.
Warrant Addict: What are your talking about? The car is getting cheaper now. Your Proton Satria in 2000 (16 years ago, RM40,000+) is equivalent to Proton Iriz (manual, now RM37,000+), Perodua Axia’s cheapest version is RM25,000+.
To graduates, why want to be job-seekers (the old fashioned mentality like your dads and mums)? Start doing business – there are great opportunities for online business in this ICT era.
My kid doing online business after graduating from UniKL, easily can get RM10,000+ (even RM15,000 sometimes). So now is not the time to have the old-fashioned mentality.
Rightan: RM1 40 or 30 or 20 years ago is only worth a fraction today because governments all over the world are printing monies too easily.
Nowadays a government can just finance deficit by issuing bonds worth billions of dollars instead of finding the hard way of balancing the budget. So how not to suffer inflation?
ABC123: Zan Azlee, your entire piece is based on anecdotal evidence, personal experience, guesstimates, and "gut feel". There are no facts, research, statistics, and quoted sources.
I am not saying you are totally wrong. But any opinion on a topic such as market rate salaries and cost of living should be based on solid research. Otherwise, it is just uninformed and uninformative guessing, which only invalidates your writing.
You have a podium, use it for more than kopitiam armchair borak-borak empty postulating. You chose a good topic, but used a very poor approach and really lacking in any substance.
You can learn from pieces by Ong Kian Ming. I do hope someone can address this timely topic but with a more worthy article.
Hilary: Zan Azlee, you are on most counts right. Sixteen years ago, jobs were not that plentiful and as such you valued your job and worked hard.
Today the graduates are not offered RM2,000 but in my company, it’s closer to RM3,000. Yet to coin a phrase from hearing about the US during the time jobs were plentiful, many graduates "Join on Friday and leave on Monday".
Can you write an article to address that?
TA: It has always been RM1,800 to RM2,000 per month as long as I can remember for a graduate with a degree. It has not moved on from those magic numbers since.
But, it also depends on the industry, too - for instance, the oil industry pay significantly well (mind you even up to RM6,000 for greenhorns) but the bubble has burst with cuts and layoffs.
I can only say, keep your head down and work hard and smart. The universe has its way of paying you the dividends.
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