Posted by News Team on January 09, 2002 at 11:56:10:
Bahamas To Join U.S. And Europe In Establishing Minimum Wage
By Bahamas Information Services
Prime Minister the Rt. Hon. Hubert A. Ingraham says
The Bahamas is joining the United States and Western
Europe in establishing a minimum wage.
The Prime Minister says the U.S., which has the most
successful economy in the world, has had a minimum
wage since the 1930s. In an interview recently on Island
102.9FM Radio, he said countries in the entire Western
Europe, which also have successful economies, also
have minimum wages.
We have done what we think is very right. The British
have done it and they have extended it to their
dependents, the Turks Islands, the Cayman Islands and
the British Virgin Islands -- all of them have a minimum
wage, and not The Bahamas? he asked.
The Prime Minister said the minimum wage legislation,
which has already been passed in the House of
Assembly, will be passed by the Senate later this month.
I expect that the minimum wage will become law in The
Bahamas not later than February 1, 2002, he said.
The Minimum Wage Bill is one of several pieces of
labour legislation the Free National Movement
government introduced in parliament two years ago to
update the country’s labour laws.
The Prime Minister said another of the bills, the Health
and Safety in the Work Place Bill, will also become law
during his tenure.
A third, the Employment Bill, came into effect on
January 1, 2002. The Prime Minister said minimum wage
has been discussed and debated in The Bahamas for a
long time.
He said Dr. C.R. Walker, a former Member of Parliament
for Southern New Providence, after the Burma Road riot,
got the House of Assembly to agree to a minimum wage
for a year.
It was extended another time for another period,
and it never ever got put into law permanently, said the
Prime Minister.
He said the Progressive Liberal Party during the 1950s
and 1960s promised to introduce a minimum wage, and
when the party assumed office in 1967 it passed a law Ð
the Fair Labour Standards Act Ð that provided for the
Minister (at that time the late Sir Milo Butler) to have
power to have a minimum wage and a workers council.
He said that for 20-plus years afterwards the PLP
government did nothing to implement a minimum wage.
We came to office in 1992, and said we were going to do
something about it, the Prime Minister said. We all had
the same groupings opposed to what we were going to
do, and I would suspect that the PLP at some point in
time made some political judgment that they were not
going to proceed with this commitment that they had.
In my case, I believe that, frankly, if I don’t do it now, its
not going to get done for a long time, and I feel; strongly
about it.
The Prime Minister said he believes $30 a day is a
reasonable sum to pay an employee in The Bahamas.
There are others who will argue that it should be more, he
said. If the economy of The Bahamas was different, I
would support that view. I think we made the right
judgment, and it applies across the board. The only
people who will be excluded, said the Prime Minister, are
children 16 years old and under. Other than that,
everybody will have to pay a minimum of $30 a day, he
said.
The Prime Minister said there are several thousands
persons in big establishments in New Providence who
pay less than $150 a week to employees.
I think it is wrong, and I’m glad I’ve had the opportunity
to do something I’ve been committed to before I entered
the House of Assembly, he said.