BARBADOS NEEDS minimum wage legislation that would protect its workers from the full force of an influx of low-cost Caribbean labour.

So said Opposition parliamentarian David Thompson, who called on the Arthur Administration to enact legislation that would set minimum wage rates designed to
prevent employers from undercutting Barbadians by offering Vincentians, Guyanese and St Lucians wages that were much lower.

"It is a matter of seeking to maintain as much as possible the standard of living of your citizens," Thompson told the DAILY NATION after delivering a lecture in Brooklyn last Sunday evening. "If the freedom of movement [of labour under the CARICOM Single Market and Economy (CSME)] compromises that standard of living by having large numbers of immigrants who are working for salaries that are way lower than what your citizens are getting, there would be a negative reaction to that.

"That's why I am saying that perhaps we need to look at the question of some kind of minimum wage legislation in Barbados to protect the standard of living of Barbadian workers. I think that's very important."

Thompson, a former Opposition Leader who once served as Minister of Finance, made it clear that, while he didn't oppose the presence of Caribbean workers in Barbados, he believed Government was negligent in not enacting minimum wage scales which would prevent Caribbean immigrants from entering Barbados and working for less than the wages offered to Barbadians.

"In Barbados, there are concerns about the freedom of movement, concerns that the Barbadian Government doesn't seem to consider relevant," he said while delivering the annual Errol Barrow Memorial Lecture sponsored by the Friends of Barbados DLP Association, the Democratic Labour Party's arm in the United States.

He articulated the need for minimum wage legislation before the "full regimen of freedom of movement" under the CSME became a fact of life in Barbados and the rest of the region, because of the willingness of nationals of other CARICOM states to work for less than what Bajans were prepared to accept while doing the same jobs.

"There are workers from other countries who are coming into your country and are willing to be paid wages way below what Barbadians are getting because that was basically their experience where they were coming from," he said.

"They are not committing criminal acts but they are saying this is what we feel our labour is worth because we can send it back to where we came from and it can do a lot of for us.

"It can't do a lot for us in Barbados, not with our cost of living. So you are already seeing that kind of labour coming into Barbados. Yet, it has bestirred the Government of Barbados to implement minimum wages to protect Barbadian workers."

What Thompson found disturbing was that over a decade ago, he as Opposition Leader, Prime Minister Owen Arthur and Sir Richard Haynes, the then leader of the National Democratic Party in the House of Assembly, had agreed that minimum wage legislation was vital. But nothing was done to implement it.

"People ask: 'How do you protect Barbadians?' You can't completely protect them against the breaking down of barriers. But you can mitigate the impact, you can help them face some of those challenges by introducing measures that would ensure their standard of living is protected. You can't afford to wipe out a whole generation of Barbadian artisans."