SHE LOVES HER JOB WHICH PAYS $129 PER HOUR

Jan 01, 2011 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

A few days ago I met a young lady, immaculately dressed in her well-ironed and starched security uniform. We began a conversation and I discovered that she worked for a security firm, one of the many such entities that have sprung up in Guyana.
What was noticeable was the enormous personal satisfaction she took in being a working woman. She was excited to be working. She was keen to get to work, so keen that she left home early so as to cater for any delays which may have been caused by rain.
She also seemed very comfortable with her eight-hour-per-day job. She seemed happy. I noticed her ease and suggested lightly that it may have been due to the fact that she enjoyed a big bonus for the holidays. She smiled and said there was no bonus. But that too did not seem to bother her.
I then told her that from her attitude it must be that she worked for a very good salary. She said “yes”.
When I asked what her weekly pay was, she told me a figure that nearly caused me to drop dead. She was working for $129 per hour. This means she was earning just around $6,000 take home per week.
How can anyone survive on that? In Guyana where prices are so high, how can a worker survive on $6,000 per week? Yet it happens. That money cannot even buy chicken feed these days, yet some workers are expected to survive.
I am sure that there are many security companies who pay their workers well above $129 per hour. But it seems as if there are also quite a few who take to underpaying their workers. $129 per an hour is atrocious!
I was told that since there is no minimum wage for security guards, some employers take advantage of this; and the fact that most guards are poor and need the job, they are forced to work for these low wages. In order to take home something to provide food on their table they opt to work overtime. It is the overtime that supplements their meager weekly earnings. Still it is difficult to see how anyone can survive on less than $200 per hour. There is no national minimum wage. There are minimum wages set for prescribed categories of workers, those who are seen as being more liable to exploitation. The government should consider adding to that list security guards, so as to ensure that they too are paid wages on which they can at least make ends meet.
It is disconcerting to believe – considering the cost of living – that there are still persons whose take-home pay for a forty-hour work week is just six thousand dollars per month. Consider the millions that are made by some individuals simply because of the right connections or landing the right deal whether for land or for providing services. These persons too have a right to make a living, but one would have expected that having been 18 years in power, the PPP would have by now been able to institute a living wage for workers. There is no living wage, but the government will dole out concessions and offer huge contracts, sometimes controversially, to contractors undertaking public works.
Perhaps if the government took half of that time to simply set a minimum wage for security guards, the country would have been better off today. But it is not likely to do this, because to set a minimum wage for security guards would represent a burden to the private sector, the very sector which has benefited more than any other from the PPP’s policies.
In this New Year, when one man can have a contract worth three billion dollars, it is time for security guards to be protected against exploitation. It is time for a minimum wage to be set way beyond $129 per hour.
Guyana is one country. But within this country, there are 2 worlds, one for the rich and the other for the poor.

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