St. Maart: Minimum wage

The current debate on increasing the minimum wage is a tricky one. For especially the breadwinner of a family to survive on NAf. 1,100 (US $611) a month or NAf. 6.35 (US $3.52) per hour in the Windward Islands in this day and age is indeed asking a lot. No one will deny that these amounts are relatively low.

The Windward Islands Chamber of Labour Unions (WICLU) wants to increase the minimum wage to NAf. 10 per hour, an increase of 57.5 per cent, be it over a four-year period. This, say the unions, will give employers the flexibility to pay per hour and maximise productivity. They also point out that when the minimum wage was last increased from NAf. 5.90 to NAf. 6.35 the business community also complained, but it did not affect them negatively.

The minimum wage issue in the Caribbean is a difficult one. In the absence of such a law or a strong union, the tendency of employers is to pay workers next to nothing. Talk to anyone who works in a Royal Castle or one of these other fast-food outlets or small stores. Construction workers, on the other hand, have more leverage than the average Joe Six-Pack in that they are skilled tradesmen the price for whose services are impacted by the health of the economy and the requirements of the market place. The average store clerk is not necessarily regarded as being skilled, yet skilled they are, either in the sales or in the use of business machinery. Nevertheless, these skills are dismissed by some businessmen as being unworthy of remuneration that allows the worker to live comfortably. This brings one back to minimum wage and the issue of a living wage. How much is enough to allow the worker to live, if not fairly comfortably, without feeling undue economic distress? If the wage is set too high, businessmen will do what they have always done. They will cut staff; then, the lowly paid becomes the unemployed. What's to be done? How much is to worth it to a businessman that someone helps him make money without fear of embezzlement or theft? That may well be the question that must be put to businessmen so that the issue of a minimum wage becomes moot.