The Grand Minimum Wage Increase

This announcement has a lot of employees in the private sector excited. I recently spoke with a Union leader and he mentioned that when the Union questioned businesses in the capital on why they paying the minimum wage of VT220 and not higher, the response was ‘government placed it at VT220, if they increased it then we would pay them more’.

First of all, hats-off to the Vanuatu National Workers Union.

These unsung heroes have been working behind the scenes of some of the most inspirational employee stories throughout the capital which will eventually make its way in the newspaper.

Secondly, should the government really be praised for a delayed minimum wage review? We’ve waited for this for a long time and the reason why it wasn’t reviewed and increased in the past was because of COVID-19. Until we could acclimatize in our own country with the new protocols in place for the virus then discussions would be back on track and now, here we are.

The minimum wage and severance upgrades could genuinely have altruistic intentions.

You could choose to see the good in our leaders and believe that their love for this country, it’s citizens and our welfare is their top priority hence the increases, or talks of it anyway.

Then comes the other side of the coin. Our borders are projected to open in July and government needs people to cater to the tourists.

A country’s most valuable resource which is ‘THE PEOPLE’ have decided to join the RSE, SWP and PLS programmes. Why? Better pay, better benefits, better treatment, better, better, better, it’s just better.

The government wasn’t thinking of the average Joes wages back when we needed it to increase.

Nope, they weren’t thinking of every time they made life more difficult for us with the constant increase in the cost of living.

Now they want to retain us average Joes by dangling a minimum wage in order to keep us in the country and help bring tourism dollars back into government coffers.

The optics of the announcement when we’re just 41 days away from our projected soft opening tells us exactly how little our government considers our wellbeing. Would there have even been a minimum wage increase if our borders weren’t going to open?

In a way, this announcement would benefit tourists and government revenue more than us ordinary folk.

If the increase is too small it won’t make a difference and citizens will still leave. If the increase is too large, that could affect the private sector workforce and we would likely see non-essential staff being made redundant in order cope with the paygrade of all employees.

If the government listened to our concerns and assisted us, as promised in their manifestos during their campaign then we wouldn’t be in this situation where a grand announcement had to be made to keep its citizens tethered to a country that continues to become more expensive to live in every year.

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