December 11, 2020
A national minimum wage, variable across industries, much talked about but never implemented, appears to have emerged from a deal to end the Barbados Workers’ Union’s standoff with guard firm G4S Solutions (Barbados) Ltd over pay.
After four days of negotiations, Prime Minister Mia Mottley announced “a seminal moment” in labour history in which the Government would move to a national pay floor by April while G4S agreed to raise its security officers’ wages from $7.42 an hour to $8.79 an hour from January 1.
The guards went on strike twice within the last two weeks to protest G4S’s refusal to give them a raise for the past six years, prompting the BWU to threaten a general strike.