The Tribune

By ALICIA WALLACE

THERE have been several news stories on the cost of living in The Bahamas, the inadequacy of minimum wage, and the clear need for a living wage. These have sparked conversations that have not been sustained. Regardless, these conversations are often met with cries of impossibility from the private sector—rooted in fear and greed—and vague commentary from government about the need for change—rooted in personal comfort divergent interests.

Most people are working as much as they can already, often juggling more than one job to make ends meet, while people in positions of power decide that the wellbeing of the people is the least important element when there an inequitable economic system to maintain.

“When we call, as employees, for more money,” Minister of Labor and Public Service Pia Glover-Rolle said this week, “we must call for more productivity as well. I'm sure as business owners we can say we don't mind rewarding with better benefits and better compensation packages when we see more productivity. So, we think that as a government, while we're working to bring employee salaries and compensation to a good place and liveable place, we should also have the expectation that productivity is improved.”

This comment should be disturbing to anyone who understands the purpose of the liveable wage and the burden of labour and insufficient income on employees in the name of profit and financial gain for the owners of capital. To make an increase in productivity a requirement for a liveable wage is to ignore the reason it exists and its necessity in The Bahamas. No one should work full time and be unable to meet their basic needs with the income from that job. Businesses and the government may have productivity issues to address, but they are not relevant to the discussion on paying employees a wage that enables them to cover the cost of housing, food, water, transportation, and other necessities. Particularly as public services deteriorate further and force people to pay for education, healthcare, and other critical services that ought to be publicly funded and/or subsidized.

The International Labor Organization (ILO) defines a liveable wage as “the wage level that is necessary to afford a decent standard of living for workers and their families, taking into account the country circumstances and calculated for the work performed during the normal hours of work.”

Similarly, the Global Living Wage Coalition defines a living wage as “remuneration received for a standard work week by a worker in a particular [time and] place sufficient to afford a decent standard of living, including food, water, housing, education, healthcare, transport, clothing and other essential needs, including provision for unexpected events.”

The liveable, or living wage, is not a prize or a bonus. It is not a shiny bauble to dangle in front of people, trying to convince them to work more or work faster. It is a standard. It is a recognition that people work to get money that they then use to pay bills and acquire the items that not only sustain their lives, but that make it possible for them to continue to work. It is the bare minimum.

When people are not able to sustain their households with income from their full-time jobs, they have to find other sources of income. It is self-defeating to demand more work of employees than a 40-hour work week, because doing so contributes to the conditions that force them to take on additional paid work. And this reduces the time available for rest, which affects productivity.

“A Living Wage for The Bahamas: Estimates, Potentials, and Problems”, published in the International Journal of Bahamian Studies in 2021, captured the attention of Bahamians with its estimate that a basic decent standard of living for two adults and two children in a household requires $4400 per month in New Providence and $5750 per month in Grand Bahama.

“With statutory deductions included, our gross living wage estimate is $2625 for New Providence and $3550 for Grand Bahama,” the report said.

“Our New Providence living wage estimate is nearly 200% and 100% higher than the country’s national minimum wage and poverty line, respectively. These indicators not only confirm that the minimum wage rate does not ensure workers live above the poverty line but also suggests that much needs to be done to ensure that everyone who works can live decently.”

Three years later, in “How Much Does It Cost to Be Middle Class in The Bahamas?” author Lesvie Archer determined that a family of four needed a monthly income of $10,200 in New Providence, and $10,100 in Grand Bahama. The report also updated the cost of living for a working-class family of four, stating that “the 2024 cost-of-living estimate for a working-class family of four is $5,000 per month in New Providence and $6,600 per month in Grand Bahama.”

In November 2024, Prime Minister Philip Davis issued his response to the cost-of-living report. “From the outset, we raised the national minimum wage, provided public sector employees with much-needed promotions and pay adjustments, and reduced the duties on a number of imported items by Bahamian families. These changes are part of a phased approach to improve wages across the board, helping Bahamians earn a fair, liveable income.”

Raising the minimum wage did not solve the problem. It is still not a liveable wage. It is not enough to meet a person’s basic needs in The Bahamas. Promotions and pay adjustments are little more than campaign material, appearing to be something on the surface, but that have little effect on the systemic issues such as poverty.

“The challenges we face are complex and require bold action,” the prime minister said. “And we know that structural change takes time. But this government is committed to a fairer, more competitive economy that works for every Bahamian.”

In May 2025, Bahamas Chamber of Commerce and Employers’ Confederation (BCCE) labour division head, Peter Goudie, added his own thoughts on the matter.

“There is no appetite for [a living wage] at the moment. We haven’t done a study, so we really don’t know what it’s going to look like. And then you’ve got to worry about how you implement higher wages when business costs are still very high. There are a bunch of issues there.”

There is a clear misunderstanding--or clear action to produce misunderstanding--of the liveable wage, its necessity, and the role of people in positions of power to make it reality. People will sleep in cars with their children. They will leave their children with people they barely know to work a second or third job. They will eat cheap, unhealthy food and suffer health consequences. They will launch fundraisers to cover the cost of surgical procedures and participate in illegal activities just to get more money.

They experience mental health crises and often struggle to leave violent households. Very few of them ever make the news. But they listen to third-party commentary on the stories of the people who do. Suffering goes on with varying degrees of visibility. And there are financial and social costs to The Bahamas and to the people of The Bahamas.

These are the consequences of a system that government officials and business owners want us to believe is a good system that works and requires us only to “work hard.” It is easier to tell us that we simply do not work enough to earn the money it takes to have a decent life here.

It is more beneficial to them to convince us that our suffering is due to our own shortcomings, not due to the design of the systems that keep us down while we try to find ways to make them work for us. There will be no consensus from people focused on maximizing profit to pay a liveable wage.

It must be imposed.

A government administration must connect the everyday problems we see and complain about to everyday systemic issues.

It must see the issue as one worth solving, and it must champion the people. It must want to see every employee have a decent standard of living.

It must want that more than it wants to exploit us by seeing our needs and refusing to meet them, while offering temporary, ineffective increments in exchange for votes.