Former Treasury secretary-general Mohd Sheriff Mohd Kassim thinks that foreign workers should be allowed to join trade unions because it will ultimately benefit all Malaysians.

“I think if they (foreign workers) join trade unions, their wages will rise.

“When their wages rise, there will be less incentive for employers looking for cheap labour to bring in thousands of labour from outside.

“If their (foreign workers) wages rise, I think it is good for all workers,” Sheriff said during a forum titled “Envisioning the Future: Malaysia Beyond GE14” in Bangsar yesterday.

He had earlier said that a major reason for low wages in Malaysia, especially at lower levels of employment, was due to an overdependence on cheap foreign labour.

Low wages at the lower levels of employment subsequently bring down the whole wage structure, he added.

“So that accounts for a major reason why disposable income is lower among the lower income group,” Sheriff, who is also a member of G25, said.

Prominent economist Jomo Kwame Sundaram, who was also a panellist at the forum, concurred with Sheriff on allowing foreign workers to join trade unions.

However, he does not believe many will be able to consider this idea seriously.

“I remember in the 1980s, when the foreign workers were first coming in, there were calls for unionisation for foreign workers.

“(This) was opposed by many other existing unions, DAP and by others as well, and I am not sure whether this position has actually changed much,” he said.

He noted that although it was easy for someone like him who was outside the political process and union world to support foreign workers joining trade unions, it was not a simple issue.

The issue was also not limited to foreign workers joining unions, he said, as currently, the membership in unions was very low.

“In the entire labour force, membership of unions is probably less than 10 percent.

“And most of them are public sector unions. (The) private sector is very, very un-unionised,” he said.