The $3 in­crease in the na­tion­al min­i­mum wage, an­nounced in Mon­day’s 2024 bud­get, has been met with favour by some busi­ness own­ers, while oth­ers ex­pressed con­cern about the rip­ple ef­fect.

On Mon­day, dur­ing his bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert said the in­crease in the min­i­mum wage from $17.50 an hour to $20.50 an hour would be ef­fec­tive from Jan­u­ary 1, 2024 and that an es­ti­mat­ed 190,000 work­ers would ben­e­fit.

Derek Chin, own­er of se­cu­ri­ty firm, Tele­com Sys­tems (Trinidad) Ltd, said his se­cu­ri­ty guards are cur­rent­ly be­ing paid above min­i­mum wage. He said the start­ing wages are from $18.50 to $32 per hour.

“What you find hap­pen­ing is that you still have to pay more above the base. So most like­ly our base will now be $21.50,” Chin told Busi­ness Guardian on Tues­day.

He al­so said the se­cu­ri­ty guards re­ceive in­cen­tives such as med­ical as­sis­tance and all em­ploy­ees have life in­sur­ance and health cov­er­age of $100,000.

He not­ed while he is not par­tic­u­lar­ly con­cerned with the $3 min­i­mum wage ad­just­ment, he be­lieves the ad­di­tion­al in­come will on­ly be ab­sorbed by the ris­ing prices re­sult­ing in some cas­es with high­er labour costs and in­fla­tion­ary pres­sure.

Chin said the fo­cus should have been more on re­duc­ing prices and im­prov­ing pro­duc­tiv­i­ty.

“We have a very poor work eth­ic, so it’s a re­volv­ing door with no mean­ing­ful progress in im­prov­ing the cost of liv­ing and qual­i­ty of life. There are very few things that will ad­dress any im­prove­ment in the cost of liv­ing and give mean­ing­ful re­lief to the pop­u­la­tion. I sup­pose we will see a fren­zy of spend­ing this year Christ­mas with the bil­lion dol­lar back­pay to pub­lic ser­vants, so that might be a plus for lo­cal busi­ness,” he added.

A well-known se­cu­ri­ty firm own­er, who did not wish to be named, said while the in­crease is seen as a good thing for some, it will al­so have a domi­no ef­fect.

The own­er said if there are 50,000 se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers in the pri­vate se­cu­ri­ty in­dus­try, lift­ing the min­i­mum wage by $3 an hour, will now mean that some­one has to pay for this.

“The se­cu­ri­ty com­pa­nies will now have to re­duce their prof­it, or re­duce their qual­i­ty of ser­vice, by re­mov­ing su­per­vi­sors and so forth, or they will have to go to the per­son who has con­tract­ed them and tell them they need to in­crease.

“In­creas­ing that cost means that the per­son who has con­tract­ed the of­fi­cers, will now have to do two things: ei­ther they will now have to in­crease the price of their goods and ser­vices to the pub­lic to off­set the in­crease, or in­stead of con­tract­ing ten of­fi­cers will now ask for sev­en. This will be a by-prod­uct of un­em­ploy­ment and in­fla­tion,” the own­er high­light­ed.

This, the own­er stat­ed, will have a rip­ple ef­fect of high­er un­em­ploy­ment for those who are re­ceiv­ing min­i­mum wage, or an in­crease in goods and ser­vices, which means the cost will trick­le down to the cit­i­zens.

Pres­i­dent of the Es­tate Po­lice As­so­ci­a­tion (EPA) Deryck Richard­son said the in­crease should have been to $30 per hour, due to the long hours se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers have to work and for them to have a bet­ter liv­ing stan­dard.

Richard­son point­ed out that oth­er is­sues with­in the min­i­mum wage must be ad­dressed for se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers such as an­nu­al and sick leave, which is not al­lo­cat­ed to them cur­rent­ly.

He said in the Min­i­mum Wages Act there is no pro­vi­sion for an­nu­al leave or sick leave for the of­fi­cers.

“We have asked the Prime Min­is­ter, via a let­ter in 2021, to ad­dress this along with the Min­i­mum Wages board and the Labour Min­istry, but to no avail to date. There are a lot of things that need to be ad­dressed for the $3 in­crease to mean more for the work­ers,” Richard­son stressed.

Se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cer John Pe­ter­son, who asked for the se­cu­ri­ty firm he works for to re­main anony­mous, said he was elat­ed when he heard the an­nounce­ment by the Fi­nance Min­is­ter, as the $17.50 per hour was not very sus­tain­able for him to run his fam­i­ly.

“This is a much wel­come move, es­pe­cial­ly with the cost of liv­ing go­ing up year­ly. Many of my col­leagues I see strug­gle on the $17.50 and they leave them­selves on, to send their chil­dren to school,” Pe­ter­son said.

An­oth­er of­fi­cer, Mark Thomas, cit­ed that the min­i­mum wage should have been in­creased by $20 more, es­pe­cial­ly for se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers who have to work 24 and 48 hours.