KUALA LUMPUR -- For more than a decade, Thangarani Karupiah had been making just 900 ringgit ($210) a month from her job sweeping and mopping floors at a private health care center near the capital. But since 2019, she has benefited from government rules on wage floors, and now pulls in 1,200 ringgit.
Politicians up for election say that raising the earnings of workers at the bottom of the pay scale could kickstart a multiplier effect that reverberates across economies, but the chiefs of Southeast Asian industries are not so sure. © Illustration by Hiroko Oshima
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