RHON­DOR DOWLAT

Se­nior Re­porter

rhon­dor.dowlat@guardian.co.tt

Days af­ter the coun­try’s ma­jor trade unions called for the min­i­mum wage to be in­creased to $30 per hour, a rec­om­men­da­tion is ex­pect­ed to go be­fore Cab­i­net with­in the next two months.

This was con­firmed to Guardian Me­dia by Min­is­ter of Labour, Stephen Mc Clashie, yes­ter­day.

Mc Clashie al­so dis­closed that he is cur­rent­ly re­view­ing the rec­om­men­da­tion to see whether it is work­able go­ing for­ward.

Asked if he could dis­close de­tails in the rec­om­men­da­tion, Mc Clashie replied: “No, I would not say be­cause that rec­om­men­da­tion, as I said, would have to go be­fore the Cab­i­net. With­in a month or two it should be be­fore the Cab­i­net.”

Mc Clashie, how­ev­er, not­ed that he is cur­rent­ly dis­cussing the min­i­mum wage is­sue at his min­istry.

“The is­sue of min­i­mum wage is al­ways un­der con­sid­er­a­tion so it’s not some­thing to be tak­en light­ly. You would ap­pre­ci­ate that when the min­i­mum wage goes up and em­ploy­ers pay min­i­mum wage their prices al­so go up and, there­fore, it af­fects the cost of liv­ing so we are dis­cussing it at our min­istry right now.”

The min­i­mum wage is cur­rent­ly at $17.50 and took ef­fect in De­cem­ber 2019.

Dur­ing the Labour Day cel­e­bra­tions on Mon­day, how­ev­er, leader of the Joint Trade Union Move­ment (JTUM), An­cel Ro­get, de­mand­ed that the mi­ni­mum wage be in­creased from $17.50 to $30 an hour.

Ro­get said work­ers need to be treat­ed with dig­ni­ty and re­spect and called on the mem­ber­ship of the trade unions and oth­er min­i­mum-­wage earn­ers to stand with JTUM and its in­crease de­mand.

How­ev­er, not all sec­tors of the so­ci­ety are in agree­ment with an in­crease at this time.

Econ­o­mist Dr Mar­lene Attzs and Su­per­mar­kets As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Ra­jiv Diptee feel the fo­cus should be on the cost of liv­ing.

The Em­ploy­ers Con­sul­ta­tive As­so­ci­a­tion, mean­while, said it is not op­posed to a min­i­mum wage in­crease in prin­ci­ple but not­ed that sev­er­al fac­tors are in­volved in cre­at­ing a sus­tain­able liv­ing stan­dard.

“Min­i­mum wage set­ting is a process that con­sid­ers many fac­tors, be­yond just cost of liv­ing which, if not prop­er­ly bal­anced, can have far-reach­ing im­pli­ca­tions for busi­ness­es—par­tic­u­lar­ly small busi­ness­es, job seek­ers and so­ci­ety,” the ECA said.

“Those who are charged with fix­ing the min­i­mum wage need to look at that bal­ance which must in­clude the par­tic­i­pa­tion of all so­cial part­ners. The ECA is com­mit­ted to en­gag­ing in tri­par­tite di­a­logue on this is­sue through es­tab­lished mech­a­nisms to do so and en­cour­age our col­leagues in the labour move­ment to do the same.”