Dear Editor,
One reads with dismay the comments in the Guyana Chronicle by Nicholas Boyer, head of the Private Sector Commission that his members at this time cannot withstand an increase in the minimum wage. So if the business class is “suffering” imagine how those workers must be feeling whom they have laid off or whose hours they have cut due to the pandemic?
Does Mr Boyer honestly think that paying someone $44,200 a month is a living wage? Of course he misses a fundamental economic truth by failing to realise that by paying workers more, they spend more. His members’ profits are intrinsically tied to the wages of the working class.
But one is already seeing the confidence of the private sector to speak out against any issue that affects the interests of their members (see Palm Court and Covid-19) and this is indicative of the reunion of the business class with the PPP/C administration – a party that actually endorses “trickle down” economics (both Second Vice President Jagdeo and President Ali have referred to that utterly discredited economic theory without irony). Holding the recent GMSA dinner at State House is another symbol of this symbiosis.
The party will do what they did pre-2015 so successfully – suppress the wages in the public sector so as to keep costs of labour down for their client.
Yours faithfully,
Francis Newton
