KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er@guardian.co.tt

The coun­try’s largest sup­pli­er of beau­ty and health­care prod­ucts, Pen­ny­wise Cos­met­ics Ltd, has pulled back on its de­ci­sion to stop pay­ing work­ers who have been with the com­pa­ny for less than four years for their lunch hour and break time.

Since the no­tice was giv­en to the work­ers, there has been a huge pub­lic out­cry over the mat­ter, with many tak­ing to so­cial me­dia to chide the com­pa­ny. Many posters claimed Pen­ny­wise made too much mon­ey to be treat­ing their work­ers, in what they de­scribed as a poor man­ner. Oth­ers ac­cused the com­pa­ny of not car­ing for the young peo­ple who work at their lo­ca­tions and even sug­gest­ed the Min­istry of Labour get in­volved.

In a me­dia re­port on Wednes­day, the com­pa­ny con­firmed that the de­ci­sion had been tak­en due to ris­ing costs aris­ing out of the in­crease in the min­i­mum wage.

The new min­i­mum wage of $20.50 took ef­fect on Jan­u­ary 1 this year.

How­ev­er, in a pub­lic state­ment yes­ter­day, Pen­ny­wise Cos­met­ics —which is the coun­try’s biggest sup­pli­er of cos­met­ics, health care and oth­er items—said man­age­ment re­ceived sev­er­al calls from con­cerned cit­i­zens about a change they say was “in­ad­ver­tent­ly made” to its em­ploy­ees’ terms and con­di­tions.

The com­pa­ny said it has re­vert­ed to pay­ing all staff for their one-hour lunch and 15-minute break, which is a perk in their con­tract.

Pen­ny­wise said it re­ceived ad­vice from its in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions con­sul­tant as it con­tin­ues to com­ply with the pro­vi­sions of the Min­i­mum Wages Act and oth­er labour laws.

The state­ment said, “Fol­low­ing a me­dia in­ter­view yes­ter­day, the Man­age­ment of Pen­ny­wise Cos­met­ics Lim­it­ed has re­ceived sev­er­al calls from con­cerned cit­i­zens about a change that was in­ad­ver­tent­ly made to the terms and con­di­tions of em­ploy­ment of some of our em­ploy­ees. We wish to ad­vise our valu­able em­ploy­ees, and the con­cerned pub­lic, that we have de­cid­ed to re­vert to the orig­i­nal terms and con­di­tions as ap­plic­a­ble. This de­ci­sion has been made fol­low­ing ad­vice from our in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions con­sul­tant as we seek to con­tin­ue to com­ply with the pro­vi­sions of the Min­i­mum Wages Act and oth­er ap­plic­a­ble labour laws.”

Pen­ny­wise Cos­met­ics Ltd, which has ten branch­es around the coun­try, has a staff count of ap­prox­i­mate­ly 1,600 em­ploy­ees with 25 per cent cur­rent­ly work­ing for the min­i­mum wage.

The in­crease in the min­i­mum wage was an­nounced in the 2024 Bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion by Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Colm Im­bert last year.

It took ef­fect this year.

Last month, then act­ing Min­is­ter of Labour Ran­dall Mitchell said ap­prox­i­mate­ly 190,000 work­ers around the coun­try would ben­e­fit from the new wage.

He added, that work­ers would al­so see $520 more in their month­ly salaries.

Labour Min­is­ter Stephen Mc Clashie urged em­ploy­ers to ad­here to the New Or­der and con­sult the Labour Min­istry if they had ques­tions.