Pay rise movement to intensify in 2019

The Confederation of Mongolian Trade Unions (CMTU) held a press conference on wages, livelihood and social situation on December 27.

“We’ve been constantly reminding and demanding Cabinet and Parliament to fulfill their obligations agreed upon in the National Tripartite Agreement on Labor and Social Consensus,” said President of CMTU Kh.Amgalanbaatar. “Look at how much currency exchange rate and commodity fuel prices have increased this year. CMTU has been submitting letters of demand to Cabinet and Parliament regarding urgent issues since October. However, these issues haven’t been resolved to this day.”

Kh.Amgalanbaatar emphasized that people are getting ready to greet the New Year without getting a wage raise, not to mention without a minister of education, culture, science and sports. He added that it has avoided holding demonstrations and rallies for many months and that from now on, it will be more persistent on its demand for higher wages.

CMTU has issued another set of demands to be met next year. The demands are:

1. Increase wages of employees in the education and science sector as soon as possible, as agreed in September 2018. 2. The agreement to progressively increase wages hasn’t been implemented to this date. Concerning parties haven’t determined by what percentage wages will be raised in January 2019. CMTU prompted negotiations for determining this. 3. CMTU demands Parliament and Cabinet stabilize fuel prices as it is directly impacting commodity prices.

4. The confederation asks Cabinet to relook its decision to increase social insurance premium by one percentage point in January 2019 and another two percentage points by 2020.