Thank God for the education that I got, mostly at the expense of poor taxpayers, because I can recognise weak arguments from a mile away. It is unbelievable that well-thinking people are again getting upset over the increase in the National Minimum Wage.

First of all, what is the surprise given that we have an election-watching, self-declared and divinely anointed pro-poor Prime Minister? Indeed, Sister P is so pro-poor that her first name starts like theirs and she has surrounded herself with a constituency full of them.

Anyway, let me behave, because I am 100 per cent behind the increase in the National Minimum Wage to its current level of $3,200 per week for general workers and $4,700 for industrial security guards. The only consideration is that it could have been more.

Of course, the trade unionists have tried to make light of the meagre monetary increase. After all, a $400-a-week increase won't allow your household worker to have Sunday Brunch at the Pegasus or any other 'boasy' hotel in New Kingston or on the 'Hip Strip' of Gloucester Avenue in Montego Bay.

Black and white

President General of the Bustamante Industrial Trade Union (BITU), Ruddy Spencer, sounding strangely like the paternal figure, Hugh Shearer in Opposition, and his colleague Pearnel Charles, who sees the matter in black and white, are making fun of the quantum of the increment. For them this measly increase does little. Nonetheless, I bet that it is not disproportionately smaller than the increases granted while their party was in government in the 1980s. However, that has been so long ago that they might have forgotten.

Although initiated by the Michael Manley-led People's National Party (PNP) in 1975, a discriminatory minimum wage was maintained during the 1980s by the BITU's Jamaica Labour Party (JLP). While it had different rates for various industrial categories, it relegated household workers to the lowest rung. Ostensibly, the philosophy behind this was that one perhaps needed to cushion the impact on those 'poor' middle-class workers who do not have the time to do their own dirty laundry, clean their houses or tend to their own children. Nonetheless, the result was a devaluation of household work and thus implicitly, an underappreciation of female domestic labour.

Furthermore, household workers in Jamaica are typically not represented by trade unions and quite myopically, they did nothing to cover them under the union umbrella. In 1985 the case involving W.I. Yeast and the Ministry of Labour made it clear that non-unionised (dismissed) workers had no status in labour disputes and could not bring their matter to the Industrial Disputes Tribunal (IDT), the only place where they could get reinstated if unfairly dismissed, as so many minimum wage earners are. Yet, a government comprising BITU unionists did absolutely nothing to protect these vulnerable workers. Indeed, unionised workers, who are covered by collective labour agreements, do not have to contend with minimum wage because their powerful, politically affiliated unions argue on their behalf, sometimes shutting down the entire country. The point here is that trade unions are not defenders of the most powerless workers as Charles and Spencer's defence suggests.

Single rate

Therefore, one positive from Portia's tenure as Labour Minister, was that this bifurcated minimum wage that was clearly a double standard, was corrected into having a single rate. This is what was increased last week.

Nonetheless, the Jamaica Employers' Federation (JEF) predictably responded via its executive director, arguing that not only has it kept pace with single-digit inflation but it has outdistanced it. With the usual plea about the inability of the employers to pay, the comments replicated those of two years ago.

Well, let lightning strike in the same place twice, because again the argument is nonsense, and my comments are reprised. As I said on January 16, 2005 on this very page, "If you can't afford to pay a helper, you simply can't afford to employ one!"

A minimum wage ought not to be simply about the subsidising of lives of middle-class Jamaicans. It is part of a social safety net that is designed to protect the most vulnerable in society. Article 23 of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights (UDHR) guarantees "the right to work, to free employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment."

The International Labour Organisation (ILO), of which both the JEF and all major trade unions are members, also has standards that have to do with minimum wages. Guiding the work of the ILO is the principle of a 'living wage', which is one that covers the basic standard of living of a worker.

While it is obvious that our National Minimum Wage cannot be the equivalent of a living wage the Government's own data from the Planning Institute of Jamaica (PIOJ), report that 70 per cent of Jamaicans who are considered as living in poverty actually have jobs. Wow!

Poverty, crime and underemployment

Again, I restate that there is a relationship between poverty, crime and underemployment. It is simplistic and even bordering on hypocritical to think that one can expect 'hallibuttn' workers to be dedicated to their stingy employers.

My suggestion for the JEF is that its efforts must be concentrated on improving productivity among workers. Here it is ahead of the game. One of the determinants of productivity is job security and wage satisfaction. Simply put, hungry workers with unsure contracts don't work well.

So, let us become matadors and kill the bull, because if the 'helper' can only feed four children, the fifth might just be the one to rob and kill you.

Dr. Orville Taylor is senior lecturer in the Department of Sociology, Psychology and Social Work at the University of the West Indies, Mona.