By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

The authority responsible for addressing all labour-related matters in The Bahamas has yet to discuss another potential minimum wage increase amid calls for all future rises to be linked to inflation.

Peter Goudie, one of the private sector’s representatives on the National Tripartite Council, told Tribune Business that the body has only just been re-appointed and only met for the first time subsequent to that on Monday where who will be named to its key posts was discussed.

Speaking after Pia Glover-Rolle, minister of labour and the public service, said “the stakeholders are at the table” over another proposed minimum wage increase, he also called for future rises to be indexed to The Bahamas’ prevailing annual inflation rate via the Consumer Price Index (CPI).

This, Mr Goudie told this newspaper, would ensure that wages for the lowest-paid Bahamians kept pace with the cost of living while enabling any increases to be more manageable for employers than the 24 percent rise to $260 per week that was implemented from New Year’s Day 2023.

“We have been appointed as the National Tripartite Council again. It finally happened,” he confirmed. “We had a meeting yesterday in order to determine who the chairman, vice-chairman, treasurer and secretary are.” 

Asked whether another minimum wage rise has been placed before the Council as a discussion topic, Mr Goudie replied: “I haven’t seen anything at all and there have been no discussions as yet. There has not been any discussion because we did not have a Council. Now we do have a Council.

“If she [Mrs Glover-Rolle] directs us to look at it we will. I haven’t seen anything yet. We’re only about a year-and-a-half into the current increase. All we can do is look at inflation at the moment. That’s all I can tell you.”

Asked whether future minimum wage increases should be tied to the prevailing Bahamian inflation rate, rather than subjecting employers to the $50 per week rise imposed last time, Mr Goudie replied: “Absolutely. I think it would be a good idea in that it would be a regular annual increase, and employers would not get hit with a big increase every two to three years.

“My view is that would just make sense to have an annual review linked to the CPI. I fully agree with that. That’s my personal opinion. That would be easier on everybody to know each year what that is going to be rather than doing it every two to three years.”

Mrs Glover-Rolle said in July that the Government wants to increase the minimum wage again soon. When asked earlier this week about what prompted the change in the administration’s stance, she replied: “We don’t make things happen immediately.

“We have to investigate. We have to analyse. We have to use data to inform our decisions, and this is the process by which we do that considering a minimum wage increase takes us speaking to the stakeholders. The stakeholders are at the table.”

Others, including the trade unions, have argued that this nation needs to go further than the minimum wage and instead focus on the so-called 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.