What About Low-skilled Workers, Will They be Affected?

Dyon Elliott

The chamber’s Chief Policy Analyst Dyon Elliott as weighed in on the potentially negative effects of the proposed adjustments, particularly where the employment of low-skilled workers is concerned.

Dyon Elliott, Chief Policy Analyst, B.C.C.I.

“There have been evidence in other jurisdictions where too sharp change in the minimum wage overnight has led companies to say, well instead of hiring ten low-skilled workers, let’s get four semi or high-skilled workers and reduce the hiring for those low-skilled workers; basically going completely contrary to the redistributive effect that the minimum wage policy was supposed to be protecting against anyway.  So the employers and businesses are going to find ways to offset these costs.  Another thing you’re going to find is that you, the consumers, some companies, I won’t say which industries, have already started to prepare themselves to pass on prices to absorb the increased cost.  There are at least eleven different things the empirical works and research in this area has shown can happen.  Now what you should ask the government is which one of those is most likely to happen in Belize.  Has that study been done?  Do they have that evidence-based approach to determine which one of that?  Is it inflation?  I can tell you [that] some of that has already started.  So, in terms of effect, there is a cost component on, yes, the employers immediately, but there is also a, there’s potential negative effects on the rest of the economy.  You can have an increase in efficiency, but that may come, hopefully not in a bad way, but that may come because employers are restructuring work to make people more productive and we are hoping that that stays within the decent work realm.”