De­spite a $2 in­crease in the min­i­mum wage for pub­lic sec­tor work­ers set to take ef­fect next month, Labour Min­is­ter Stephen Mc Clashie has dis­closed that last year’s in­crease of $3 to $20.50 for all work­ers is not be­ing ful­ly im­ple­ment­ed.

Dur­ing his Bud­get con­tri­bu­tion in Par­lia­ment, Mc Clashie said the Labour In­spec­torate Unit with­in his min­istry re­cov­ered $1.7 mil­lion in un­paid wages owed to em­ploy­ees who had not re­ceived the man­dat­ed in­crease over the past year.

“We have a num­ber of poli­cies and laws but some­times peo­ple don’t do the right thing. Peo­ple do what you in­spect, not what you ex­pect,” he said.

He high­light­ed con­cern­ing trends where many busi­ness own­ers fail to pay min­i­mum wage, some at­tempt to em­ploy chil­dren, and oth­ers ne­glect to pro­vide pa­ter­ni­ty leave.

From Oc­to­ber 2023 to Sep­tem­ber 2024, the Labour In­spec­torate ad­vised 275 walk-in clients and re­spond­ed to 724 tele­phone in­quiries. Dur­ing the same pe­ri­od, the unit re­ceived 386 com­plaints and con­duct­ed 802 in­spec­tions, re­sult­ing in the re­cov­ery of $1,728,000 for work­ers who had not re­ceived their wages or in­creas­es legal­ly, he said.

Mc Clashie al­so urged pri­vate sec­tor em­ploy­ers to con­sid­er in­creas­ing their min­i­mum wage.

“I urge those pri­vate sec­tor com­pa­nies who are still at the $20.50, there is noth­ing hold­ing you back if you feel that you are get­ting the pro­duc­tiv­i­ty lev­els and that your work­ers are good, for you to in­crease their rate. The Gov­ern­ment has not said and will not com­pel you to do so and that is a de­ci­sion to make on its own.”

He said the Min­istry’s Con­cil­i­a­tion Ad­vi­so­ry and Ad­vo­ca­cy Di­vi­sion (CAAD) has been ad­dress­ing con­cil­i­a­tion and me­di­a­tion mat­ters, of­fer­ing ad­vice to em­ploy­ers and em­ploy­ees.

He al­so ac­knowl­edged Gov­ern­ment’s com­mit­ment to ad­dress­ing sex­u­al ha­rass­ment in the work­place, an is­sue af­fect­ing men and women, par­tic­u­lar­ly mi­grant work­ers.
To tack­le this prob­lem, the min­istry launched a na­tion­al tri-lin­gual helpline, 800-CAAD (800-2223), where agents can com­mu­ni­cate in Eng­lish, Span­ish and French. This helpline, es­tab­lished in June 2023, aims to sen­si­tise both em­ploy­ers and em­ploy­ees on man­ag­ing work­place ha­rass­ment.

He al­so said the Sex­u­al Ha­rass­ment in the Work­place Bill is cur­rent­ly un­der re­view by the Chief Par­lia­men­tary Coun­cil.

Ad­dress­ing child labour is­sues, Mc Clashie said Cab­i­net has ap­proved his min­istry’s en­gage­ment with the In­ter­na­tion­al Labour Or­gan­i­sa­tion for tech­ni­cal as­sis­tance to ex­pe­dite a na­tion­al child labour pol­i­cy next year.

He al­so dis­cussed the na­tion­al pol­i­cy on HIV/AIDS, say­ing the min­istry has en­gaged with 72 work­places and 129 work­ers in sen­si­ti­sa­tion ac­tiv­i­ties, while as­sist­ing an ad­di­tion­al 25 work­places in de­vel­op­ing their HIV poli­cies.

Com­ment­ing on the cur­rent labour par­tic­i­pa­tion rate, he not­ed that it re­mained steady at 560,400 em­ployed in­di­vid­u­als. De­spite job loss­es, he said new op­por­tu­ni­ties have been cre­at­ed.