WIN promotes single minimum wage

The Women’s Issues Network of Belize has met with Valdemar Castillo, Minister of Labour to discuss the establishment of a Wages Council to review the current minimum wage structure. Mirlin Halliday, head of the Advocacy Committee says the meeting was part of WIN – Belize’s ongoing campaign to establish a single minimum wage.

Mirlin Halliday, Head, Advocacy Campaign Committee

“Well the minimum wage for domestic workers right now is a dollar seventy-five and if you times that by forty or whatever hours a woman works per week, that simply can’t cut it to buy. Especially if it is a single-family mother with children, that won’t put butter on the bread you know, you have to be making more than that. The Cost of living has gone up and since this wage was implemented in 1992, it is time for a new minimum wage. Well we are saying that the two dollars twenty-five cents could be the single minimum wage but we are saying that nobody earns less than two dollars twenty-five cents, above that but not less than.”

Halliday said Minister Castillo agreed with the organization’s idea to establish a minimum wage council and says the group was promised a council would be appointed soon to advise him on the issue. Currently agricultural and export industry workers earn a minimum of two dollars an hour.