Ali­cia Llanos

Pres­i­dent of the Bankers, In­sur­ance and Gen­er­al Work­ers Union (BIG­WU) Vin­cent Cabr­era says the trade union still stands be­hind its $20 an hour min­i­mum wage pro­pos­al. In a phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day, Cabr­era re­ferred to re­cent re­ports from the Cen­tral Bank that in­fla­tion had risen to 14.1 per cent in Ju­ly, and in­sist­ed that BIG­WU con­tin­ued to stand be­hind its pro­pos­al of rais­ing the min­i­mum wage from $9 an hour to $20. He said at $20 an hour, a work­er re­ceiv­ing the min­i­mum wage would earn about $3,200 every four-week cy­cle. Cabr­era said many unions had low­ered their pro­pos­als for a new min­i­mum wage, af­ter Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Win­ston Dook­er­an spoke of the ris­ing in­fla­tion, but his union was still stand­ing firm be­hind its pro­pos­al.

He said BIG­WU was al­so ask­ing for the min­i­mum wage to be re­assessed every two years to en­sure wages kept pace with the ever-ris­ing cost of liv­ing. Cabr­era said a ma­jor prob­lem with the cur­rent min­i­mum wage was that it re­mained the same for the past six years, while the cost of liv­ing be­came more ex­pen­sive. He said the Gov­ern­ment should not look at it as min­i­mum wage but as a "liv­ing wage" that en­sures all work­ers can fi­nan­cial­ly keep pace with the ris­ing cost of food, hous­ing, etc. He said there was some con­cern that should the min­i­mum wage be low­ered, work­ers would es­sen­tial­ly be bring­ing home less than some­one re­ceiv­ing the new $3,000 pen­sion grant.

In re­la­tion to what he want­ed to see come out of Wednes­day's bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion, he said the union was call­ing for the es­tab­lish­ment of a Fair Price Com­mis­sion. Cabr­era said such a body was need­ed to pre­vent price-goug­ing and "un-nat­ur­al in­fla­tion." He said the Fair Price Com­mis­sion would mon­i­tor the in­fla­tion of prices com­pared to the mar­ket rates to en­sure all pric­ing was fair and cus­tomers were not falling vic­tim to price-goug­ing. Cabr­era al­so called an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the lev­el of in­equal­i­ty of in­come. He ex­plained that a sta­tis­ti­cal study need­ed to be con­duct­ed us­ing salary da­ta from the Cen­tral Bank, the Cen­tral Sta­tis­tic Of­fice and oth­er par­ties to track salary trends and un­cov­er any in­equal­i­ty of in­come.

Cabr­era said what he want­ed to see in the bud­get was an in­vest­ment in so­cial in­fra­struc­ture. Such so­cial in­vest­ment should be com­pre­hen­sive and all in­clu­sive. It was time for the Gov­ern­ment to look be­yond phys­i­cal in­fra­struc­ture and fo­cus on the needs and de­vel­op­ment of the peo­ple, ac­cord­ing to the trade union­ist. Cabr­era ex­plained the union want­ed to see fur­ther in­vest­ment in health care, so­cial ser­vices, ed­u­ca­tion and es­pe­cial­ly the de­vel­op­ment of the agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor. The Gov­ern­ment al­so need­ed to pay spe­cif­ic at­ten­tion to the ex­pan­sion of agri­cul­ture and sub­sidise lo­cal­ly-pro­duced food, he said. Cabr­era said the Gov­ern­ment should look in­to the use of the Ca­roni lands for agri­cul­tur­al growth rather than hous­ing.