Minimum wage report expected end of June

| 21/02/2023 | 38 Comments
Minimum wage Cayman Islands, Cayman News Service
MWAC Committee 2023: (back L-R) Ralston Henry, Adolphus Laidlow, Stafford Berry, Steve McIntosh, and Dan DeFinis, (second row L-R) Dennis Caum, Shomari Scott, Mahreen Nabi, Monina Thompson, Shan Whittaker, (front L-R) Philip Jackson, Deputy Chair Tonicia Williams, Chairman Lemuel Hurlston, Herbert Crawford, Lydia Myrie, and Wendy Moore. Missing is Cathrine Welds. (Click to enlarge)

(CNS): It is almost seven years since a national minimum wage of CI$6 per hour was introduced in the Cayman Islands when inflation was running at -2.8%. Since then, that basic rate has not been increased, despite the runaway inflation over recent years. The newly formed Minimum Wage Advisory Committee held its first meeting just over three weeks ago to begin discussions on the adequacy of that rate but a report is not expected to go to Cabinet until at least the end of June.

Lemuel Hurlston, who chaired the original committee chair that recommended the CI$6 wage back in 2015 based on a very different set of circumstances, is once again leading a cross-section of representatives who are expected to make recommendations to increase the amount.

The committee includes people from various local associations representing both employees and employers, as well as representatives from civil society, with support from the Ministry of Border Control & Labour, the Economics & Statistics Office (ESO) and the Department of Labour & Pensions (DLP).

The committee, which is now meeting weekly, will investigate the impact of a new minimum wage at various points as well as whether the country should establish various minimum wages for specific industries, sectors or age groups.

In a press release from the government Monday, Hurlston said the minimum wage rate affects everyone. “As we meet weekly over the coming months, by looking at current and future factors that it may affect and through advice from independent consultants, we hope to be able to advise the Cayman Islands on a way forward in determining a new minimum,” he said.

The committee will be advising the public of opportunities for engagement as meetings progress, officials said.


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Comments (38)

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  1. Anonymous says:

    IF he wanted to before he retires, France could hire 100+ men and women by simply breaking the private security guard contracts in the schools and government buildings. Those companies pay peanuts plus we have expat guards at the front lines of our schools and other offices instead of our own cadre of responsible men and women of all ages.
    The NAu list and WORC alone could take these people off unemployment , give them benefits, and kick start careers in policing, CDC, immigration etc for these young security guards.
    If only there was a will to do something like this instead of beating around the bush !!!
    We know that it shouldn’t be left up to the soon incoming new Deputy Governor.

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    • Anonymous says:

      Oui, oui.

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    • Anonymous says:

      And yet the same dynamic applies. The unemployed Caymanians have to be willing to do the job for the rate that the job pays. And if they were, they would already be doing it as irrespective of what trope you believe about employers only wanting to hire expats, if a Caymanian applied and complained if they didn’t get the job, they would. So as well as breaking b the current contracts, Franz would have to do something else like increase the pay rate by 100% – and even then you would struggle to find Caymanians willing to work as security guards, a job with poor pay, long hours, poorly regarded by Caymanians, antisocial shifts and sometimes even dangerous.

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      • anonymous says:

        Caymanians are in every service – from uniformed to tourism which we built from scratch.
        The difference now is the slave wages offered..and the expectant cheap labour which it attracts by default.
        We are masters now at importing poverty and also pushing our own into it, or else brand them as unwilling to work, as you repeat in your intentionally misguided troupe above.

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    • Anonymous says:

      Sure a young caymanian doing security guard work..what a joke. That is why there are only work permit holders. So tell me it’s better NOT to work than at least make 6 or 7 dollars and hour?

  2. watcher says:

    Please, allow me to save some time:

    Caymanians cannot sustain a family — or even themselves — on $6.00/hour. The default is to be immersed in the NAU system. Yes, raising the minimum wage will raise prices. It must be so, but ONLY if we are willing to firmly support Caymanian employment and all that comes with it.

    You’re welcome.

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    • Anonymous says:

      “Watcher”@12:03pm – Absolutely correct, thanks!

      I’ve watched from the inside for all of my mid-sixties age and I’ve witnessesed my Caymanians largely buy-in to the big sell-out since the mid-70s, and never recorrected!

      Over the past 40 years that culture, preached from political platforms in the name of “development for Caymanians”, has permeated the populace…..sell our vote, sell our culture. Shamefully!

      First and foremost, our education system has regressed. Just when the Oxford and later, Cambridge education systems had a chance to impact a few school generations, the Government of the day got onboard the CXC curriculum. These standards seemed to “dumb-down” the system just to achieve more “passes”. Good for education reports, back-slapping and justifying bigger budgets, to do more of the same!

      So, if our fundamental system, education, has regressed, how in the world have we progressed?

      Sold our standards and values too!

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  3. Anonymous says:

    Abusive.
    Indentured slavery here

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  4. Anonymous says:

    Cayman also needs changes to Wild West landlord tenant laws to introduce more robust tenant rights. Some landlords have been abusing the legislative gaps to hike rents by as much as 30% mid-lease, to gouge and/or evict occupants, and replace them with someone willing to pay more. Consumer protections don’t really exist here like elsewhere, and that is part of the high cost of living. The whole business-centric paradigm needs to be rebalanced to demonstrate this is a civil society.

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  5. Gavin R. Putland says:

    What’s better than raising the minimum wage? A tax on vacant commercial land and vacant shop-fronts. Whereas a higher minimum wage may discourage hiring, a vacant-commercial-property tax makes property owners seek commercial tenants in order to avoid the tax. The tenants in turn will need workers, leading to more demand for labor, hence higher market wages and more secure employment.

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  6. Anonymous says:

    Can’t raise min wage over 2k but all the financial people laundering money ‘legally’ make 20-40k per month.
    Oh yeah tell me how they’re more qualified and work harder than regular people on min wage.

    Bunch of bull shit, other people exploited Cayman’s tax system and we can’t even tax the money and pay our own people more.

    Such a joke.

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  7. Anonymous says:

    100% minimum wage needs to go up but understand everything will go up…employers will have to pass it on to the clients…

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    • Anonymous says:

      everything has gone up. business owners have made sure to recoup there money. They just did not raise what the pay their staff. someone mentioned the people making 20 -40 k a month laughing, but it is the Cayman business owner laughing as they have everyone fooled. They have crazy expensive prices, and now they get to raise prices again when they increase staff wage. Someone explain the cost being more then 4 times what it costs in the states…. if i buy something at a store in the states for $10, logic says it should be 25% more for duty, say 10% more for delivery if that, and a mark up of 10% for a nice mark up to bring it around $15, yet that $10 item is costing upwards of $25….not a foreigner robbing us people, but our own people. Same as who is selling the land…our own not foreigners.

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    • Anonymous says:

      complete BS.

      minimum wage workers will never save money. so an increase will flow right back in the economy.

      if you don’t understand that, you should not comment on these subjects.

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  8. Anonymous says:

    Anything less than $12PH is not good enough. The hardest working people on the island (hospitality) are the worst paid.

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    • Johnny the Wad says:

      oh I beg to differ. hospitality employees are doing quite well. personally in the business for 22 years. purchased 3 condos locally, travel every year. definitely not slumming it. I guess the trick is you have to physically walk out the door and go to work on days and hours that a good portion of the workforce don’t do. to quote kid rock “you get what you put in”

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    • Anonymous says:

      but with that automatic 18 %
      servers are making bank$$$

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  9. Anonymous says:

    Unfortunately, there will always be those with no claims to citizenship of any sort who are willing to work for less than minimum wage, all the while attesting that their employer is paying them minimum wage. They also know that no pension contributions are being made on their behalf, and pray that they don’t fall sick because they have no health insurance coverage either.

    The real problem is unscrupulous employers, not the minimum wage.

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    • Anonymous says:

      Or – the real problem is that business seek to extract every ounce of profit they can as they have done since the rise of capitalism and that despite worker productivity being at record levels boosted in part by the advent of
      and widely readily available tech like computers that wages have been stagnant once you take annual inflation into account (many people in real terms have seen pay decreases for the same work over the past few decades)

      When are we going to stop concocting immigrant scapegoats for our systemic issues and actually confront the real cause of our economic issues – vast near limitless corporate greed and the exploitation of workers who have no choice but to sit back and take a pittance while landlords and modern day robber barons run out the back door with all the money while claiming that they need tax cuts, deregulation and subsidies in order to succeed in their businesses

      There is a cost to endless corporate and commercial greed that cost is a human cost – when you can’t afford to raise a family while being ‘responsible’ and while working full time job that is a result of the system we live in

      When we send our young people to specialise and better themselves in tertiary education then they come back seeking fair pay for their qualifications and are laughed out of the room by business owners who would rather line their own pockets than lose a cent they could otherwise keep and instead assign the work to staff who are already at capacity – too many times in too many private firms have I seen workers expected to do their own work PLUS the work of others due to unfilled vacancies which will never be filled to keep the profit line rising

      We let these companies pay people a pittance for their time and then act surprised when crime skyrockets because people who can’t make ends meet resort to petty crime and get into disputes over small bills

      A $6 dollar an hour minimum wage would leave even a single person living in poverty – the idea that it is sufficient for anything in 2023 is comical and anyone who says otherwise especially living somewhere as expensive as Cayman betrays their ignorance

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  10. Gustafson says:

    How much per month to rent a small place and pay for essentials and health insurance? CI$2,000 say? Call it $500 per week / 40 hours per week gives a minimum wage of $12.50 per hour. I reckon that sounds about right. Of course slave driver employers will take a different view.

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    • Anonymous says:

      Be thankful they employ you. Or are you a multiple handout recipient?

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      • Anonymous says:

        Sir, may I have another bowl?

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        • Ms Bodden says:

          it’s best that the minimum wage goes up because the cost of living on the island is too expensive imagen only make $475 every 2 weeks that’s no money to survive on the island Slavery days are over it’s time for a change

          • Anonymous says:

            yet, you stay here so it must be working for your somehow. Not that I am against minimum wage but don’t act like it is for the foreign worker who is actually making it work at the $6 an hour or else he or she would leave.

  11. Anonymous says:

    Oh Noo.
    Why put back the same chairman that reduced national wages backwards to $6/hr AND Tourism wages to $4.50 (MINUS Pension and Health deductions)?!!
    That ushered in the welfare state and cheap imported labour that now plagues us!!
    BTW the new Minimum Wage must be a MONTHLY Factor of at least $4,000 Monthly.
    Not an hourly factor that employers can use to manipulate staff – split shifts, weird late and early or weekend hours etc. That’s what they do to justify not hiring “lazy” locals.
    And there are still full time staff at Government that earn less than $3,000 per month.
    Shame!!!

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  12. Anon says:

    These are the poorest among us – why is it not just a straightforward increase to match inflation? Rich people getting richer on the backs of the poor.

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  13. Anonymous says:

    yawn…why are they creating a problem when there isn’t one….
    increasing minimum wage will only increase inflation…

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  14. Anonymous says:

    Minimum wage should be pegged to the price of a footlong. Or BK’s two for X$ special.

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  15. Anonymous says:

    If the minimum wage was raised to $12.50, with true competition among Cayman businesses, enabled via a consumer advocacy agency, like a Better Business Bureau, then we could perhaps chart the lowest unemployment numbers ever for this territory, erasing tens of thousands of needless work permits and capacity strain. Business margins would go down, while consumer and worker values up. Sadly though, the Chamber of Commerce desire the near-slave labour wages to maximise their profits and have rigged the deck against such noble efforts. I wish the MWAC the best of luck with this.

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    • Anonymous says:

      Hahahaha. Wow. Where did you get your PhD in economics? Off the back of a lorry?

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      • Anonymous says:

        why mot raise the minimum wages by percent of cost of livimg like Govrt raises pensioners, wont be much, but it will help and be fair

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