To­day's Ed­i­to­r­i­al

If el­e­ments of the labour move­ment feel ig­nored, slight­ed, rel­e­gat­ed to an af­ter­thought in the bud­get­ing process, then no one will be able to blame them for adopt­ing such an at­ti­tude. For work­ers in this econ­o­my earn­ing the $9 min­i­mum, and there are said to be thou­sands of them, even per­haps there be­ing large num­bers of work­ers not earn­ing the min­i­mum, such work­ers would be tak­ing home just about $1,500 per month based on an eight-hour day and a five-day work week. How can a fam­i­ly, as­sum­ing there are those in which there are two work­ing peo­ple be­ing paid at the min­i­mum lev­el, how can they with two de­pen­dents sur­vive on $3,000 per month in this pe­ri­od of in­fla­tion­ary food prices? How a com­par­a­tive­ly well-off so­ci­ety and econ­o­my can have work­ers in such a con­di­tion over a long pe­ri­od of time with­out do­ing some­thing to move such fam­i­lies from the mar­gin of un­re­lieved pover­ty?

How can the chil­dren of such fam­i­lies have enough nu­tri­tion on a dai­ly ba­sis, notwith­stand­ing the school-feed­ing pro­gramme, to be able to suc­ceed in ed­u­ca­tion and oth­er forms of tech­ni­cal and vo­ca­tion­al train­ing to hold out the hope that at some point in the fu­ture, they would be able to as­sist par­ents and sib­lings to move be­yond mar­gin­al ex­is­tence? These ques­tions are be­ing asked af­ter the dis­cus­sion on the min­i­mum wage has gone on for six years with­out res­o­lu­tion. It is not suf­fi­cient for this or any gov­ern­ment to plead mit­i­ga­tion on the ba­sis of be­ing in of­fice for mere­ly three months. The point be­ing that gov­ern­ment, dis­cus­sions, re­search and un­der­stand­ing of a con­di­tion take place notwith­stand­ing the po­lit­i­cal di­rec­torate in of­fice. There­fore, the new gov­ern­ment com­ing in­to of­fice would be in­formed by all that has gone on be­fore and so in a po­si­tion to make a po­lit­i­cal judg­ment of what is es­sen­tial­ly an is­sue of sur­vival and pos­si­ble de­vel­op­ment.

It is al­so un­ten­able for min­is­ters and com­men­ta­tors to for­ev­er si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly put the is­sue of the min­i­mum wage in the con­text of pro­duc­tiv­i­ty. Usu­al­ly when a work­er is be­ing paid such a low wage, the em­ploy­er en­sures that he/she ex­tracts from the work­er every ounce of en­er­gy the work­er is ca­pa­ble of ex­pend­ing. So the de­mand for greater pro­duc­tiv­i­ty from min­i­mum wage work­ers is mis­placed in ref­er­ence to the min­i­mum wage labour­er. More­over, as the pres­i­dent of Natuc re­cent­ly said on the is­sue of pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and wage rates, it is to work­ers at the low­est end of the pay scale that in­cen­tives should be giv­en as a means of in­creas­ing pro­duc­tiv­i­ty. Mak­ing the link­ages to pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and the min­i­mum wage is al­so un­fair when such ques­tions are not gen­er­al­ly raised over well and ex­treme­ly well-paid work­ers.

Well, the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance and the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment used the car­rot in the bud­get to give en­cour­age­ment to po­lice of­fi­cers to car­ry home more of their salaries through the $1,000 tax break.

Should work­ers at the low­est pay lev­els not feel en­ti­tled to such en­cour­age­ment al­so? Now ad­vo­cat­ing that the Gov­ern­ment keeps its promise to work­ers to move quick­ly and just­ly to in­crease the min­i­mum wage does not mean rais­ing it to a lev­el which will put em­ploy­ers out of busi­ness or se­vere­ly crip­ple their op­er­a­tions. There are can be a cou­ple or a few steps be­tween the present rate and the de­sire for $20 per hour; but the move­ment has to start now oth­er­wise $20 will no longer be at­trac­tive. But maybe the strat­e­gy of the Min­is­ter and the Gov­ern­ment is to leave the an­nounce­ment of the in­crease in the min­i­mum wage to Labour Min­is­ter Er­rol McLeod to please his for­mer trade union col­leagues. We shall see.