Dear Editor
When a National Minimum Wage was first introduced in this country by the UNC government in 1998, part of its appeal and promise was to ratify and coalesce the minimum amount of money a Trinidad national could earn despite the sector they found themselves working in. Prior to this, there were individual pieces of legislation guiding the wages that persons working across various sectors might earn, such as the Petrol Filling Station Employees Order, 1982; the Minimum Wages (Catering Industry) Order, 1991; the Minimum Wages (Shop Assistants) Order, 1991; the Minimum Wages (Household Assistants) Order, 1991; and the Minimum Wages (Security Industry Employees) Order, 1995. The wages that persons would earn under these Orders ranged from approximately $1.85 per hour on the low end to $6.05 on the high end. As such, creating a universal minimum wage cap of $7.00 per hour at that time not only gave these workers a long-anticipated increase in their earning potential but also gave them a sense of security in their ability to provide for themselves and their families.
Now you may notice that prior to 1998, there did not exist an Order for the public service, first because there exist various trade unions that ensure that government workers are properly compensated for their work, but also because while the private sector is keen to minimise salaries for their bottom line, the government while miserly, still ought to provide proper salaries to their employees without having to be bullied by legislation. Of course, once the Minimum Wage Bill was implemented, and a Minimum Wage Board was constituted, all of these concerns became irrelevant because there was now legislation and a governing body in place to ensure that all workers, no matter what job they were performing, would be secure in the knowledge that the salary they were receiving would at least be able to meet the bare minimum standard to provide some level of comfort in their livelihoods.
This is why it was infuriating to hear the Minister of Finance in his 2025 presentation acknowledge that the current Minimum Wage is not sufficient to meet the needs of the working class but for the increase of a measly two dollars to be provided for Public Service workers only. First and foremost, what this means is that for the first time since 1998 when the Minimum Wages Act was assented to, this Bill no longer provides universal coverage to all nationals, something that it was specifically scripted to accomplish. But more practically, what this means is that the government is separating the Public Service from the Minimum Wages Act, and it will be interesting to see how they go about this in their legislative agenda, especially as the Minister of Finance stated that they intend to unify it again at some point in the future. This proclamation is made even more strange when you consider the PNM is approaching its final year in government, and as such is yet another empty promise.
What’s worse is that the Minister of Finance is using the excuse of protecting small businesses as his reasoning for not making this increase universal to all workers, when it’s clearly the big businesses who stand to benefit the most from not having to shell out extra cash to their employees. But for the government to admit that they are aware of the fact that the minimum wage is insufficient for the most vulnerable workers in our society to survive, but at the same time, deny the bulk of workers who are being paid the minimum wage from getting this minuscule increase is demonstrating exactly who they prioritize in their decision making.
And when you consider that the money that is going to finance this increase to government workers is coming from the taxes collected from the same private sector workers who are being deprived of an increase from the private sector corporations making millions in profit every year, I ask you, what are we really doing as a country?
Best regards,
Ravi Balgobin Maharaj
