Raphael John-Lall

Many em­ploy­ers are of the view that the min­i­mum wage, which is of­fi­cial­ly $9 an hour, needs to go up. This comes in light of the cur­rent de­bate over the mer­its and de­mer­its of rais­ing the min­i­mum wage. The new Gov­ern­ment has al­ready said that it would ex­am­ine the min­i­mum wage. On June 9, Labour Min­is­ter McLeod said the Gov­ern­ment would ad­just the min­i­mum wage ac­cord­ing to the re­al­i­ty of the sit­u­a­tion that ex­ists to­day.

Trevor Joseph, chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer, T&Z Mar­ket­ing Ltd, be­lieves that most work­ers in T&T earn above the min­i­mum wage of $9 an hour.

"No­body I know works for $9 an hour. If you want a labour­er to work for you, you have to pay them at least $150 a day. In the con­struc­tion sec­tor, I don't think you can get some­one to mix ce­ment and work for less than $250 a day," he said. Joseph said em­ploy­ers and busi­ness peo­ple must be pre­pared to pay a min­i­mum wage if they get in­to busi­ness.

"If you want to get in­to busi­ness, you must be pre­pared to pay min­i­mum wages. All the em­ploy­ees, like store clerks, fast­food restau­rant work­ers and peo­ple like them, would ben­e­fit from a min­i­mum wage," he said. Joseph sug­gest­ed a min­i­mum wage of $15 an hour. "I think if they es­tab­lish a min­i­mum wage of $15 and make it ap­plic­a­ble to Cepep and URP work­ers and es­tab­lish stan­dards, then even­tu­al­ly em­ploy­ers in oth­er sec­tors will be able to pull these work­ers up and em­ploy them at high­er wages," he said.

High­er wages, high­er pro­duc­tiv­i­ty

Joseph be­lieves that al­though a min­i­mum wage is nec­es­sary, work­ers in T&T must al­so in­crease their pro­duc­tiv­i­ty. "You have work­ers who work for more mon­ey at Cepep and URP and work less hours than they would have to at an 8 am to 4 pm job. There must be an in­crease in pro­duc­tiv­i­ty from our work­ers. Em­ploy­ers must be able to dis­ci­pline work­ers if they don't work their full shift or don't come to work," he said.

Sec­toral mim­i­mum wage

Ya­cat Ali, chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer, Trinidad Par­boil Ltd and Old Mac Agro, said work­ers should work for more than the present min­i­mum wage, but rais­ing the min­i­mum wage must be care­ful­ly con­sid­ered.

"Some of the trade unions had pro­posed $20 per hour, but you can't jump from $9 an hour to $20 an hour just like that. That pro­posed wage is too high," he said. Ali said the 30 peo­ple work­ing in his com­pa­nies are paid above min­i­mum wage. "The present min­i­mum wage is on the low scale. I pay about $150 for an eight-hour shift," he said.

Ali has pro­posed sec­toral min­i­mum wages. "The Gov­ern­ment has to put every­thing in a struc­ture. There should be dif­fer­ent min­i­mum wages for dif­fer­ent sec­tors in the econ­o­my. I think that the busi­ness­men and the dif­fer­ent busi­ness cham­bers must be con­sult­ed in this process," Ali said.

'Govt must be pru­dent'

Nal Ram­s­ingh, pres­i­dent, Cou­va/Pt Lisas Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce, be­lieves most em­ploy­ers in T&T pay more than the present min­i­mum wage. "In my busi­ness, I pay more than the min­i­mum wage. Many of the work­ers get paid more than the min­i­mum wage, so the Gov­ern­ment has to be re­al­is­tic in rais­ing the min­i­mum wage," he said.

He pro­posed a min­i­mum wage of $12. "The Gov­ern­ment must be pru­dent. If they raise the min­i­mum wage to $12 per hour, then work­ers will be able to sur­vive and so would the busi­ness peo­ple," he said. Nals­ingh raised pos­si­ble side ef­fects of a mim­i­mum wage in­crease. "If the Gov­ern­ment rais­es the min­i­mum wage too high, there could be rise in prices and the rate of in­fla­tion and that could lead to job loss­es," he said.

He said a min­i­mum wage that is too high would on­ly af­fect the more vul­ner­a­ble in so­ci­ety. "At the end of the day, wages are a cost in the pro­duc­tion of goods and ser­vices. A min­i­mum wage that is too high will lead to busi­ness peo­ple rais­ing the price of their goods. The small man will be af­fect­ed in the end. He will be the one to car­ry the bur­den," he said. Ram­s­ingh ar­gues for an over­all min­i­mum wage where the mar­ket de­cides the rates. "There should be an over­all min­i­mum wage and let de­mand and sup­ply take care of how the wages are set. If there is a short­age of en­gi­neers, then there would be high­er wages in this sec­tor be­cause the short­age would cre­ate a de­mand for high­er wages to at­tract these peo­ple," he said.

Wages and SMEs

The min­i­mum wage should be in­creased, said Johnathan Adams, chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer, Small En­ter­pris­es Busi­ness As­so­ci­a­tion.

"If we paid the min­i­mum wage, then no­body would be work­ing for us. Most small and medi­um en­ter­pris­es (SME) have paid no less than $15 per hour in the past. The stan­dard wage in the SME sec­tor is be­tween $125 to $150 for an eight-hour work day and this is for an un­skilled labour­er," Adams said. He said if the Gov­ern­ment es­tab­lish­es a $15 an hour min­i­mum wage, then it would be a good place to start for low­er skilled peo­ple, who should even­tu­al­ly be able to work their way up. "At $15 an hour, this would on­ly be ac­cept­able for a short while. We have no prob­lem with rais­ing the min­i­mum wage, but once it is not too high. The min­i­mum wage must not be­come a 'com­fort' to peo­ple. They must use it to start and then grad­u­ate to bet­ter pay­ing jobs," he said.

Fair wage

Tony Paul, man­ag­ing di­rec­tor, As­so­ci­a­tion of Caribbean En­er­gy Spe­cial­ists Ltd (ACES), said the is­sue in the en­er­gy sec­tor is not one of a "min­i­mum wage," but a "fair wage." "The sec­tor does have a de fac­to min­i­mum wage frame­work and that is 'what­ev­er the gov­ern­ment or State sec­tor pays.' "The oil and gas com­pa­nies in ex­plo­ration and pro­duc­tion base their salaries to lo­cals on the lo­cal mar­ket. Gen­er­al­ly, the Min­istry of En­er­gy is the low­est pay­ing em­ploy­er of oil and gas pro­fes­sion­als. "Petrotrin has fixed wages with the Oil­field Work­ers Trade Union (OW­TU) and some com­pa­nies, in­clud­ing Petrotrin, will not en­gage pri­vate con­trac­tors un­less they give as­sur­ances that their salaries and wages are at least as good as those in the Petrotrin/OW­TU agree­ment," said.

Paul point­ed to leg­is­la­tion that guides wages in that sec­tor when for­eign­ers are seek­ing lo­cal em­ploy­ees. "The Pe­tro­le­um Reg­u­la­tions (made un­der the Pe­tro­le­um Act), at Reg­u­la­tion 42 Gen­er­al Oblig­a­tions 2(f) states:

(2) A li­censee shall–(f) min­imise the em­ploy­ment of for­eign per­son­nel, en­sure that such em­ploy­ees are en­gaged on­ly in po­si­tions for which the op­er­a­tor can­not, af­ter rea­son­able ad­ver­tise­ment in at least one dai­ly news­pa­per cir­cu­lat­ing in T&T, find avail­able na­tion­als of T&T hav­ing the nec­es­sary qual­i­fi­ca­tions and ex­pe­ri­ence; de­ter­mine the rules of em­ploy­ment, in­clud­ing salary scales, in such man­ner as to en­sure that all em­ploy­ees in the same cat­e­go­ry en­joy equal con­di­tions ir­re­spec­tive of na­tion­al­i­ty." Com­ment­ing on how for­eign­ers ad­here to this leg­is­la­tion, Paul said: "This has not gen­er­al­ly been the prac­tice."