The United Church in Jamaica and the Cayman Islands has called for the government to consider implementing a living wage instead of merely a minimum wage.
Bryan Bothwell, deputy general secretary of the church said the living wage concept was being implemented in other jurisdictions.
‘The important point is that you don’t have a minimum wage just for the sake of having one,’ he said. ‘You want a wage that can meet the basic needs of people, and so they can have a reasonable standard of living if they are working full time.’
The United Church recently sent a letter and statement advocating the implementation of living wages to the Cayman Islands Cabinet through Leader of Government Business Kurt Tibbetts. The letter came after Employment Minister Alden McLaughlin said last month that he was a strong supporter of minimum wage laws and that there would be a review of the minimum wage issue as part of a consultant’s study on the Department of Employment Relations.
Although the United Church strongly supports the institution of a minimum wage, it urged the government to adopt the living wage concept, which it believes will end poverty wages.
‘We believe such a requirement and objective can only be just and right,’ the church said in its statement to the cabinet.
‘We therefore respectfully call on the government to use all the data available to it to calculate what a minimum wage should be in Cayman – or in each Island if the evidence so indicates – in order to meet the standard of a living wage.
Mr. Bothwell said determining the living wage could be difficult because of there are a number of factors to consider, like what constitutes the basket of goods needed for a person or family to live on reasonably and how many people is it reasonable for one full-time wage earner to support with a living wage.
But the church said in its statement that it was confident a living wage could be calculated in a way to ‘make a positive impact in the lives of the families of those workers who need to be empowered in this way’.
Mr. Bothwell said the living wage would help Caymanians and expatriates, particularly in certain types of jobs.
‘It’s not so concerned with jobs with natural upward mobility,’ he said. ‘It’s about jobs where the wages stay pretty much the same, no matter how old you are, for a long time.’
The Church said a living wage is not a handout, but fair pay for fair work. It also said there were probably only a small number of jobs in Cayman that required intervention.
There is some opposition to the living wage concept, which the United Church acknowledged.
‘Increasingly, it is being found that opposition against a meaningful minimum wage has been based on data whose integrity is now often open to question or have been reasonably refuted,’ their statement said.
‘We also appreciate the benefits of a free economy but, with due respect, we do not believe the persons in the lowest levels of our workforce have truly free bargaining power in negotiating their wages.’
The church stated it questioned the equity of building particular industries or segments of the economy based on poverty wages for a few at the bottom of the pay scale.
Some opponents to the living wage have argued that setting wages to standards that aren’t market driven would increase unemployment and possibly inflation as well.
Studies done in jurisdictions that have implemented living wages have shown no increase in unemployment, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
The EPI said that most of the added expense of a living wage is recouped through lower training and recruitment costs for businesses. Because the wages paid are higher, employee retention improves as do efficiencies because of higher morale.
There are also some governmental administrative costs for implementing a living wage. However, in Baltimore, Maryland, that cost only came out to 17 cents per taxpayer per year, the EPI states on its website.
Mr. Bothwell said United Church has been discussing a living wage with various Cayman governments for many years because it was something it felt strongly about, and that it would gladly participate in any public consultative process initiated to formulate a method of implementing a living wage.
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