JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Friday, February 21, 2025

Security firms approve minimum wage hike

...but warn of trick­le down im­pact

by

Andrea Perez-Sobers
505 days ago
20231005

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.


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored