By Fay Simmons

Tribune Business Reporter

jsimmons@tribunemedia.net

The Government’s labour director yesterday said the National Tripartite Council has been discussing the concept of a “livable wage” and described it as “an ongoing process”.

Robert Farquharson said of the body that deals with all labour-related matters in The Bahamas: “The National Tripartite Council has already begun discussions on the livable wage. I won’t be able to give you a timeframe, but it’s an ongoing process.”

The Davis administration promised to introduce a livable wage and review the minimum wage in its 2021 ‘Blueprint for Change’ manifesto. In January 2023, the Government increased the minimum wage gy 24 percent, or $50 per week, from $210 to $260.

Mr Farquharson said the National Tripartite Council has “reached out to a number of local, regional and international institutions” to discuss a livable wage and, once those consultations are completed, it will begin to liaise with the private sector and trade unions.

He explained that the livable wage will set out how much the average Bahamian family needs to maintain a reasonable standard of living, and acknowledged it will be an “enormous task” that accounts for daily living expenses such as education, insurance and fuel.

Mr Farquharson said: “What the livable wage does, it goes beyond the aspect of a minimum wage. It sets the standard of what our typical Bahamian family would need to live in The Bahamas. It includes insurance and the cost of gas and cost of fuel, costs of education. All those things have to come into play, and it’s an enormous task.

“We look forward to exceptional co-operation and collaboration with the private sector, with the civil society and have a number of Town Meetings to get the views of the Bahamian people on really what it is to implement this livable wage.”

University of The Bahamas (UoB) researchers, in a study produced in 2021, pegged Nassau’s monthly living wage at $2,625 while the equivalent for Grand Bahama was $3,550 per month.

The authors, Lesvie Archer, Olivia Saunders, Bridget Hogg, Vijaya Permual and Brittney Johnson, wrote: “Our gross living wage estimate for New Providence is 26 percent lower than the Grand Bahama living wage estimate, nearly 200 percent higher than the national minimum wage, 127 percent higher than 2013 poverty line and nearly 75 percent higher than the minimum wage hike proposed by a local union.

“Our living wage estimate for Grand Bahama is nearly 300 percent higher than the living wage, 200 percent higher than the 2013 poverty line and 140 percent higher than the minimum wage hike proposed by a local union.” The Bahamas’ private sector minimum wage, last increased following VAT’s introduction in 2015, is currently $210 a week.”

The minimum wage, though, is defined differently from the “livable wage” measure employed by the UoB study. It based its work on a model employed by Richard Anker, the International Labour Organisation’s (ILO) living wage specialist, who defined a livable wage as one that can sustain a person’s “physical, emotional, social and cultural needs and that of their family beyond mere subsistence”.

Food and housing costs, based on a “nutritious diet” and “decent housing”, were factored into the calculations together with other daily living costs, while the research also drew on data from sources such as the 2019 Labour Market Information Newsletter; 2017 Labour Force Report; and 2016 Government of the Bahamas salary book.