ST. JOHN’S, Antigua, CMC – Prime Minister Gaston Browne has criticized the President of the Antigua and Barbuda Chamber of Commerce, Yves R. Ephraim, over statements made regarding the timing and implementation of the new minimum wage.
“ Yves Ephraim served on the minimum wage committee, representing the Chamber of Commerce: he agreed and recommended EC$9.00 minimum wage to the Cabinet for adoption, to be implemented on January 1, 2023,” Browne said, adding that the effective implementation date of was announced over a month ago.
In a statement last week, Ephraim said that the private sector had been informed that the Minister responsible for Labour had ordered a minimum basic wage of nine dollars per hour for employment in Antigua and Barbuda, effective January 1.
“The Chamber wishes to voice its utmost displeasure with the timing and manner with which the “Minister responsible” has issued such notice,” he said, adding that among the concerns of the private sector is that “the Minister responsible has created unnecessary angst for many affected businesses by issuing the notice on the day before payday and for simultaneously making the implementation of the minimum wage retroactive by setting the effective date as of January 1, 2023.
“Further, the notice comes when most of the affected businesses would have already completed payroll and have already sent paychecks to their employees’ bank accounts,” the chamber president said, adding that the “Minister responsible, in our opinion, acted without regard for how such retroactive implementation on the eve of a payday would have stoked unnecessary tension between employer and employees, by giving the false impression that the affected employers might be deliberately failing to comply with the law.”
Ephraim said the Minister responsible exercised a lack of compassion by ignoring that those affected businesses already feeling the adverse effects of an underperforming economy were already dealing with the increase of Social Security contributions, starting this January.
“One would have thought that the public notice on January 26, 2023, would have announced the introduction of the new minimum wage from February 1, 2023. We would expect a caring government to do this,” Ephraim added.
He said further that the Minister responsible should be aware that this increase in the minimum wage represents a 9.75 percent increase in payroll cost for certain affected and struggling businesses whose payroll costs are already as high as 80 percent of income before this increase.
“Further, the effect of compounding this increase with the Social Security increase and the other payroll taxes has translated this nine-dollar minimum wage into an actual EC$10.26 per hour payment for affected employers.
“It is unfortunate that for some of these affected businesses, they will immediately suffer major loses without the opportunity to announce a possible increase in prices for their goods and services or a possible laying off of some staff,” Ephraim added.
But Prime Minister Browne noted that during the campaign for the January 18 general elections, the main opposition United Progressive Party (UPP), had proposed a EC$10:25 minimum wage and that “Yves and his other Chamber of Commerce members sat silently without objection to the proposed unsustainable increase to EC$10.25.
“I am appalled that having participated and agreed to the nine dollars minimum wage, the Chamber president and its members are now seeking to undermine the process and to encourage discontent,” Browne said, adding that the “simple solution to the late processing of the minimum wage order is to pay the staff retroactively the paltry EC$16, per employee for January”.
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