The PUP Plan Belize Manifesto 2020-2025 promised that the minimum wage would be increased to $5 per hour as soon as the “economy roars back”, a resurgence which the party’s leadership confidently predicted we would see shortly after it was returned to power. The core pledges in the PUP manifesto were crafted at least a year before the Covid-19 pandemic hit, and the party did not scale down its promises, even though it must have known that the economy it planned to build on had crumbled. The PUP had an election to win, and after the party won, its leaders expressed shock at the horrible state our economy was in.
Experts have said the present $3.30/hr. minimum wage did not cover the basic needs of Belizeans when it was implemented a little over a decade ago, so the promise of an approximate 50% increase to $5 per hour was particularly appealing to Belizeans in the lowest brackets.
One and a half years into its mandate, the government has said that bad economic times in Belize and the world will prevent it from building the 10,000 starter homes it promised in its 2020-2025 manifesto. As things stand, the government isn’t likely to reach a quarter of that target. The world economy and ours are still doing poorly, and to increase the difficulties of constructing 10,000 starter homes, the cost of essential imported building materials have increased upwards of 20%.
There are no roars yet in our economy, and the GoB will fall short in housing and a number of other areas, but it has stepped up, in some sort of fashion, to deliver on its minimum wage promise. There is no decree from the House of Representatives, no date set for when this manifesto promise will be fulfilled. Instead, via a release from the Belize Press Office on July 1, we learned that the Ministry of Rural Transformation, Community Development, Labour and Local Government had appointed a Task Force “to oversee the gradual implementation of the five-dollar minimum wage, a commitment of Plan Belize.”
Notably, the largest groups whose lives would be directly improved by a minimum wage increase – domestic workers, shop assistants, farm workers—don’t have union representation. For various reasons, not least of which is that the ranks of these groups are filled largely by Belizeans from rural areas who have come to urban areas to improve their earnings, or persons not born in Belize, there hasn’t been any agitation on their part. An increase in wages for these groups could be considered “compassionate.” It definitely isn’t something they have fought for.
NTUCB president, Luke Martinez, said that back in 2012 the unions, after studying all the key indicators, had recommended a minimum wage of $6 per hour. The president of the Belize Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Marcello Blake, said a gradual implementation of the increase would allow businesses the time to adjust to paying higher wages.
The GoB is being quite cautious. PM John Briceño said we have to be realistic about the wage increase, that it’s a “balancing act.” The PM said the minimum wage can’t be raised faster than what the economy can absorb, that if the wage increase is too high it could cause businesses to shut down, that it could “create incredible inflation that can lead us to devaluation.” The PM said he believed some families who employ domestic workers might have a hard time footing the bill. “I wish it was easy [to just declare a minimum wage of $5], but it’s not,” he said.
Economist/engineer, Bill Lindo said on a recent blog that after some thorough research the PUP, while in opposition, had settled on the $5 minimum wage. It’s a noble objective to increase the minimum wage, because as it stands today, with massive increases in the prices of most goods, $3.30 per hour is far from a living wage. In a recent paper, CSSPAR’s coordinator, David Gibson, said a decent living wage, one that “covers all basic needs consistent with Belize’s obligations with respect to its Sustainable Development Goals,” is now estimated at $8 to $10 per hour.
Poor Belize, $5 per hour doesn’t cut it, and it has to do a “balancing act” to deliver on that promise. If the wage increase was carried out across the board, would shop owners raise the prices of goods, would the jobs of domestic workers be jeopardized, and what would farm owners do?
In its research the GoB will find that the employers who have the least to be concerned about are the BCCI’s shop owners. The salaries of public employees are now back to what they were pre-pandemic; tour guides and waiters are getting more jobs as the tourism industry bounces back; all that translates to greater buying power, more purchases at the supermarkets and grocery shops. A wage increase for shop assistants should not end in higher prices at the shops, not if shop owners have a conscience, not if the GoB monitors prices.
In our present economy, the GoB’s “balancing act” will be mostly for those who work in homes or on farms. Domestic workers are mostly employed in urban areas, and those who aren’t lucky enough to get quarters with their employers must bear the full raft of bills that leaves even middle-class Belizeans scrambling to pay the necessary utilities and put food on their plates. $3.30 per hour is far from a living wage for them. Traditionally the agriculture industry depends on cheap labor, mostly of immigrants or the very young. The conditions on farms are not the best, far from it, but people who work on farms don’t have the bills of people who live in urban areas, and their meals are supplemented by farm fresh produce which they obtain at wholesale prices, or grow on free plots.
Our present economic model is in a “balancing act”, a struggle to deliver a minimum wage that covers the basic needs. There have been some praiseworthy moves by our GOB, particularly in agriculture and land distribution, but Belizeans have to battle to keep the PUP government from giving too much to its big financiers who insist on gobbling up the lion’s share of our national pie, leaving the rest of us to scramble for crumbs that trickle off the table.
Economist/engineer, Bill Lindo insists that our present economic model cannot produce and sustain high-paying jobs for our people, that to do so we must produce the things we need. Over the years he and many others have invested in projects to produce the things we need, with little or no GoB support. It shouldn’t be that we have to go through contortions to deliver an insufficient minimum wage increase, to $5 per hour. But that will be our lot as long as we hold on to the present trickle-down model.