Rishard Khan

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

A fi­nal de­ci­sion on chang­ing the min­i­mum wage is ex­pect­ed in com­ing weeks, ac­cord­ing to Min­is­ter of Labour, Stephen Mc Clashie.

Mc Clashie told Guardian Me­dia the Cab­i­net has been de­lib­er­at­ing the change over the last three weeks and he an­tic­i­pates a fi­nal de­ci­sion with­in the next two weeks.

Cur­rent­ly, the min­i­mum wage sits at $17.50 per hour with the Joint Trade Union Move­ment (JTUM) call­ing for it to be in­creased by al­most 100 per cent to $30 an hour.

How­ev­er, the Min­is­ter chose to keep de­tails of the fig­ures be­ing con­sid­ered close to the chest when asked by Guardian Me­dia if Cab­i­net saw this sug­gest­ed in­crease as a vi­able op­tion.

"I wouldn't even want to go there. Sup­pose we say $35, or $17, $18. So I would not ven­ture in­to giv­ing...any per­cent­ages or fixed quan­tum," he said.

De­scrib­ing the de­lib­er­a­tions as "com­plex", Mc Clashie re­it­er­at­ed that the fi­nal de­ci­sion would, and must, be a fig­ure that does not do more harm than good.

"You do not want to put a wage that spi­rals in­fla­tion and, in fact, has the op­po­site ef­fect of what you want to put in place. It's a dy­nam­ic that has to be bal­anced be­tween the needs of peo­ple and al­so the out­come with re­gards to the im­pact on the econ­o­my," he said.

Econ­o­mists like Dr Mar­lene Attzs ex­pressed sim­i­lar con­cerns about the im­pact an in­creased min­i­mum wage will have on in­fla­tion.

Dur­ing his con­tri­bu­tions dur­ing the 2023 Bud­get pre­sen­ta­tions in Par­lia­ment in Oc­to­ber, Mc Clashie re­vealed the Min­i­mum Wages Act was among the leg­is­la­tion to be re­viewed. In June, he re­vealed that the Min­i­mum Wages Board made rec­om­men­da­tions to ad­just the min­i­mum wage be­fore the call was made by JTUM pres­i­dent, An­cel Ro­get on Labour Day.

MC Clashie was un­able to say when an an­nounce­ment could be ex­pect­ed of Cab­i­net's fi­nal de­ci­sion.

"I can­not say now but more than like­ly if I had to do it my way, I would prob­a­bly do it with­in the bud­get and that's on a per­son­al note. That is not a for­mal po­si­tion," he said.

Min­i­mum wage was last ad­just­ed in De­cem­ber 2019 to $17.50- four years af­ter it was raised to $15 in 2015.