Fiji’s micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) have mounted a coordinated challenge to the Employment Relations (Amendment) Bill 2025, warning that the proposed changes could undermine business survival and derail national targets to grow the sector’s contribution to GDP. In a statement reported on 8 November 2025, the MSME Network – representing nine councils under the Fiji Commerce and Employers Federation – called on government to return the Bill to the Employment Relations Advisory Board for further consultation.
MSMEs currently account for an estimated 18 per cent of GDP and around 60 per cent of employment, including a majority of women and youth. The National Development Plan aims to lift their GDP share to 22 per cent by 2029, a goal the network says is at odds with provisions in the Bill such as new elements of criminalisation, strict liability, increased powers for labour inspectors and expanded leave entitlements
The network argues that most MSMEs operate in rural and informal settings and already struggle with high compliance costs, skill shortages, access to finance and climate-related shocks. Tougher penalties and more complex obligations, they contend, risk pushing informal operators further away from formalisation and could force marginal enterprises to close or shed staff.
Their statement also points to earlier discussions at the National Economic Summit in 2023, where government and private sector stakeholders acknowledged the need to ease compliance burdens and align labour standards reforms with enterprise capacity. The current draft, in their view, assumes “all businesses are large businesses” and fails to differentiate between big employers and micro operators.
For policymakers, the pushback underscores the difficulty of balancing worker protection with SME competitiveness. A reworked Bill that phases in certain provisions, tailors requirements by enterprise size or couples new obligations with targeted support programmes may be needed to keep Fiji on track for its MSME growth targets without diluting core labour standards.
