THANK YOU, UNCLE DONALD!

Jun 23, 2013 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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The greatest exploiters of the working class are to be found within the rich. You think the government pays its workers poorly, try the private sector! If you believe that workers are underpaid in the public sector, take a closer look at sections of the private sector! There you will see the face of exploitation.
There is a security guard who is paid $125 per hour by his employer. That cannot even buy a half-litre bottle of Coca-Cola. At this wage rate he has to work eight hours per day to obtain a $1000.  If he works forty hours per week his pay is $5,000 per week or $20,000 per month.
But of course he does not work an eight-hour day or a forty-hour week. His shifts are 12-hour shifts. Thus for five days of work he clocks in for sixty hours. At $125 per hour, he earns $7,500 per week or $30,000 per month. But with “time and a half” and double pay, from working overtime and on holidays, he can increase this to around $40,000 per month. But time and a half and double pay is scarce, because the boss always finds someone to work on the days these are paid so as to avoid having to pay the overtime to the guard.
He can earn more if he works double-shifts. Some days when his colleague fails to relieve him, he has to double up. He is thus asked to work twenty-four hours on the trot. Some guards boast of working thirty-six hours straight. This is not overtime but merely extra work, but because the money is small, the guard does not mind.
In this context, try telling that guard that the government should put on hold its recent decision to increase the minimum wage to $9,000 per week for a forty-hour week!  Trying seeing whether he will support any decision to halt that decision while further consultations with the private sector take place!
With the new wages, this guard’s income will increase from $7,500 per week to $9,000 for a forty-hour work week. This is $6,000 more per month. But since he works an average of 60 hours per week, it means that he will earn an additional $6,750 in overtime, effectively allowing him to now earn as much as $15,750 when before, for the same work, he would have only been receiving $7,500 per week, since his normal shifts then would have been twelve-hour shifts.
Do you know the impact that this doubling of that guard’s income will have on his lifestyle? For once he can say that he is being appreciated and being paid fairly.
Two wrongs are being simultaneously corrected. The first is the underpayment of $125 per hour, which now moves to above $200 per hour, a more than 60% increase – the highest percentage wage increase ever offered in Guyana. And the second wrong which is being righted at the same time is the reduction in the working hours before overtime is payable. Instead of twelve-hour shifts, this particular security guard will earn overtime after only forty hours.
But it is not only security guards that are going to be positively affected by the recent decision to institute a national minimum wage. There are workers in certain factories in this country, overwhelmingly women, who are required to work six days per week, eight hours per day, that is, forty-eight hours per week. At the end of the week they receive $6,000.
When some of these workers query their low pay, they are advised that the company transports them to and from work and therefore they are freed of having to pay transportation. What they are not told is that if this transportation was not provided, no one would work at these factories, because the pay would barely cover the transportation costs. These girls will now enjoy a fifty per cent increase in their earnings.
There is a domestic who does ironing for one of the richest families in Guyana. She stands for eight hours, one day per week, pressing that family’s clothing. At the end of the day, she is given a $1,000 bill for her efforts. All that will now end.
The recent decision by the government to institute a national minimum wage at $9,000 for a forty-hour week is the most progressive working class policy that has taken place in Guyana since the PPPC came to power.
Donald Ramotar has done a good thing here for the poor workers of Guyana. There must be no retreating from this decision, even in the face of the pressures that will be brought to bear by sections of the private sector. Some unscrupulous businesspersons will however try to find ways around the regulation. They may try, for example, to exclude the lunch half-hour from the computation of the forty hours.
The government should put their foot down here. Every worker should be entitled to at least a half an hour lunch break each day. With pay!

 

 

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