PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

se­nior re­porter

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

An in­crease in the min­i­mum wage from $17.50 to $30 would mean more mon­ey in the pock­ets of work­ers, but might not low­er the cost of liv­ing.

Econ­o­mist Dr Mar­lene Attzs ex­plained that such an in­crease, a 71 per cent rise, might cause a domi­no ef­fect and the wider pub­lic will face an even more per­ilous sit­u­a­tion in terms of their spend­ing pow­er.

“One of the things that is very ev­i­dent in the coun­try is that the cost of liv­ing is in­creas­ing and per­sons who are on fixed in­comes and min­i­mum wages are in fact feel­ing a sig­nif­i­cant strain as prices es­ca­late. Now, hav­ing put that in on the ta­ble as the first point, there is al­so the con­se­quence of an in­crease in the in the min­i­mum wage to $30.

“It means that the cost of labour is go­ing to in­crease and once the cost of labour in­creas­es, it means that the cost of goods and ser­vices com­ing to the con­sumers will al­so in­crease. So the in­crease to $30 is ac­tu­al­ly go­ing to have a fur­ther pres­sure on the cost of liv­ing now,” said Dr Attzs, who in­stead rec­om­mend­ed that fo­cus to be placed on ad­dress­ing the cost of liv­ing.

“Let’s look at how we could pos­si­bly try to im­ple­ment mea­sures that can ben­e­fit the so­ci­ety as a whole in terms of man­ag­ing the cost of liv­ing, be­cause I cer­tain­ly think that while I un­der­stand the call for the in­crease in the min­i­mum wage. I do think that such an in­crease will ben­e­fit the work­ers in the long run.”

Vivek Char­ran, Pres­i­dent of the Con­fed­er­a­tion of Re­gion­al Busi­ness Cham­bers, agreed that the in­crease might put fur­ther strain on busi­ness­es, es­pe­cial­ly small and medi­um en­ter­pris­es, and lead to in­creased un­em­ploy­ment.

“We al­so look at the lev­el of com­mer­cial ac­tiv­i­ty. In oth­er words, rev­enues earned by busi­ness­es are quite low. Then we can see that if there is in fact a min­i­mum wage hike at this mo­ment, I can on­ly see un­for­tu­nate­ly the lead­ing to un­em­ploy­ment as peo­ple who have em­ployed many peo­ple may not be able to be foot the bill, the wage bill in re­la­tion to what their earn­ings are, or hours be­ing cut so that in ef­fect, the wages paid are the same as the wages that were paid be­fore there was any rise in the min­i­mum wage,” he said.

Char­ran said this is not an in­stance of busi­ness­es be­ing on a dif­fer­ent page to work­ers as the eco­nom­ic strain is be­ing felt by both sides.

“I don’t feel that labour them­selves are in this alone. I do be­lieve busi­ness to a large ex­tent we are in there with them to­geth­er,” he said.

“I be­lieve that this is one par­tic­u­lar point in time af­ter COVID that we’re all feel­ing the brunt of in­fla­tion, ex­ter­nal in­fla­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly food in­fla­tion have been com­ing to­geth­er with all the oth­er ris­ing costs that have hap­pened due to things like in­crease in ship­ping rates, and so on and how things change in terms of man­u­fac­tur­ing glob­al­ly. But that’s a lot for peo­ple when they’re think­ing about how far the salary is go­ing to take us”

Pres­i­dent of the Su­per­mar­kets As­so­ci­a­tion Ra­jiv Diptee agreed that the fo­cus should be on the cost of liv­ing.

“I think that you will find that the cost of liv­ing has gone up across the board. I think that there needs to be a prop­er ex­am­i­na­tion and this is not just food prices, be­cause ob­vi­ous­ly food prices al­so af­fect­ed by things such as fu­el prices and in­creas­es the cost of se­cu­ri­ty,” said Diptee.

The Em­ploy­ers Con­sul­ta­tive As­so­ci­a­tion said it is not op­posed to a min­i­mum wage in­crease in prin­ci­ple but not­ed that sev­er­al fac­tors are in­volved in cre­at­ing a sus­tain­able liv­ing stan­dard.

“Min­i­mum wage set­ting is a process that con­sid­ers many fac­tors, be­yond just cost of liv­ing which, if not prop­er­ly bal­anced, can have far reach­ing im­pli­ca­tions for busi­ness­es—par­tic­u­lar­ly small busi­ness­es, job seek­ers and so­ci­ety,” the ECA said.

“Those who are charged with fix­ing the min­i­mum wage need to look at that bal­ance which must in­clude the par­tic­i­pa­tion of all so­cial part­ners. The ECA is com­mit­ted to en­gag­ing in tri­par­tite di­a­logue on this is­sue through es­tab­lished mech­a­nisms to do so and en­cour­age our col­leagues in the labour move­ment to do the same.”