Former Labour Minister Chris Saunders has called on government to take the necessary steps to bring the Cayman Islands up to international standards when it comes to workers’ benefits and wages.
Saunders said Cayman “has not done a very good job” of implementing law changes to help employees.
“I am going to ask for us to comprehensively take a look at the international standard in terms of employee benefits, which include maternity leave and everything else, and even minimum vacation leave,” Saunders said in his contribution to the budget debate in Parliament on Tuesday night, 12 Dec.
Saunders, during his tenure in the labour ministry, launched the minimum wage review and a review of the existing maternity leave benefits.
Labour Minister Dwayne Seymour is yet to announce any changes to the minimum wage, but has instead suggested further review is needed and that it could be “sectorised.”
Saunders urged that efforts to improve the lives of workers continue, insisting it was not right that some employees were “being treated very, very poorly and not being paid a proper wage”.
He urged that funding be set aside to create a safety net for workers.
He said 95% of Caymanians make their living from providing a service, and most families would be one medical emergency away from being bankrupt, so it is up to legislators to provide a safety net as protection.
Saunders went to bat for domestic employees, urging Caymanians to reconsider “the way some of you treat your domestic helpers. Y’all need to stop. Pay them on time. They got family back home to feed.”
“Stop letting them pay back for their work permit and everything else,” he cautioned.
He said no one wanted to address this part of the issue, because it affected voters.
“Some of you take advantage of the domestics. They need to stop it,” he stated, encouraging Seymour to carve out a separate category for domestic helpers, as they had previously discussed doing, when the minimum wage review committee was established.
The Cayman Compass, in a special investigative series, highlighted the plight of some employees on minimum wage. Some spoke of abuse and bullying, while others detailed how they were poorly paid.
Saunders said a lot of people are worried about costs going up, but Cayman risked a “black mark” if domestic helpers who work here for decades are not paid a pension.
Under the law, employers of domestic helpers don’t have to contribute to their pension.
Saunders declared it “disgraceful that some of them, after 30 or 40 years of caring for loved ones, giving us their best years, go back home with nothing.”
He urged government to set aside some of the funds generated from work permits to assist domestic helpers once they reach a certain age.
“The amount of people that have worked, helped us reach where we are… our children benefited from it, [and those workers] have returned home and are living in some really bad conditions. I know people who are still sending money back to their helpers in their old age back home, but it is something that we need to look at as a people and as a country,” Saunders said.
He urged Seymour to look at some of these conditions on the basis of human rights.
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