The General Workers’ Union (GWU) says that it will never accept any changes to the way the cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) is worked out unless unanimously agreed to by social partners.
I believe the GWU should be pushing in exactly the opposite direction, namely that the COLA formula needs to be changed as soon as possible so that minimum wage earners are paid a decent salary, even if not all social partners agree. Nobody should hold a veto if this blocks social justice.
The GWU’s position is very close to the Malta Employers’ Association (MEA), which called for the introduction of a new COLA mechanism that would leave the calculation of COLA unchanged.
Never has a change in the COLA mechanism been so urgently needed to enable minimum wage earners and pensioners cope with the rising cost of living. The GWU must be careful not to find itself in the same bed with the MEA.
The government raised the hopes of workers when Social Dialogue Parliamentary Secretary Andy Ellul announced the setting up of a Low Wage Commission (LWC) to recommend ways to revise the minimum wage but these hopes were dashed when he added that employers should not be put under undue pressure.
This is strange coming from a socialist junior minister. Will he, therefore, put our minds at rest that no undue compromises will be made? It is the minimum decent wage that we are talking about, not some fancy six figure salary for a cushy part-time job.
I hope that the remit of the LWC is to establish at what level a minimum decent wage should be pegged, not at what employers are willing to pay.
With so much unexplained wealth around us, one may wonder who owns the super yachts, sumptuous villas with swimming pools, luxury cars, expensive jewellery, wines and summer houses in Malta and abroad. When, at the same time, only 40 per cent of businesses declare a taxable income, we cannot give credence to absurd sweeping claims by employers that they cannot afford wage increases.
Minimum wage earners do not own yachts and do not live in villas- Joe Pace Ross
And will the government claim, like it did with the nurses, that it has no money notwithstanding that “the economy was never so strong”. If it really cannot pay for such increases, all it has to do is to embark on a creative tax collecting campaign. It will capture enough funds not only for itself but also to provide relief to those employers who genuinely cannot afford to pay.
But is there the political will to do so? The harvest is plentiful but the labourers (of the right kind) are few. The result of this laissez faire attitude where tax collecting is concerned is a mounting national debt of €9 billion on which the minister has to pay every working day the sum of circa €500,000 in interest. Yes, every day. Imagine what we can do with this money.
We cannot afford this extravagance and waste while waiting for the end of the year to revise the COLA, which was introduced 32 years ago. The arrangement was, and still is, good; only the components in the mechanism need updating and this only because living patterns have changed over the years.
A lot of spadework has already been done, for example the excellent MEBDL report published by Caritas Malta. We only need to tie the loose ends.
No doubt, attempts will be made to delay the conclusions of the LWC by those who have every reason for this delay to happen. Given this danger, the parliamentary secretary should make it clear that any adjustment will be backdated to 2023. We must not let the poor waiting.
We do not know when the commission will present its report. We do not know how much the adjustment will be. But everybody knows one thing for sure. Minimum wage earners do not own yachts and do not live in villas. They are counting their cents to see what they can buy from the grocer tomorrow morning.
Joe Pace Ross is a retired bank executive.