Barbados Workers’ Union general secretary Toni Moore is determined to ensure that workers do not have to wait four more years for another national minimum wage increase.
The Government backbencher, who is Member of Parliament for St George North, made that vow on Thursday night at Husbands Road, St James, while supporting the candidacy of Barbados Labour Party St James North by-election candidate, Chad Blackman.
Minister of Labour Colin Jordan announced on May Day that the national minimum wage would increase from $8.50 an hour to $10.50 per hour from June 1.
“Back in 2021, when a minimum wage was introduced, it was understood that a family of four,
a mother and three children, if a living wage instead of a minimum wage that is enough to suffice getting by on, was to be achieved, that the rate should not have been $8.50; it should have been $12.50,”
Moore said.
“And this is where I a li’l vex with the Minister of Labour, because it should not have taken four years for us to do the adjustment. But we are working on it and I will ensure that another four years does not go by before the next adjustment.”
Moore gave the current administration a passing grade for the improvements it made in relation
to labour laws and other measures to help workers, including the introduction of a national minimum wage.
“The first thing that happened six months after I became a Member of Parliament [is] a minimum wage was introduced in Barbados, effective April 1, 2021,” she said.
Moore praised the introduction of paternity leave, the extension of maternity leave, and tax-free meal allowances for hotel and restaurant workers as announced in the Budgetary Proposals 2025.
She also pointed to the $300 Solidarity Allowance to be paid to all qualifying citizens of Barbados above the age of 18 and that “we have seen increases to the allowance for tax purposes of union dues”.
“We’ve had the Labour Contracts Law and the Labour Concessions Law to ensure that anybody who benefits from the public purse must adhere to minimum standards which the union will negotiate.”
Unfortunately the workers are working hard to keep productivity at a minimum.