Janney 1G 190!

Some firms pay as much as 10 months’ bonus, some
5 months, some 2; some of them pay 10 months’ bonus
to Directors, and some 6 months’ bonus to the junior
managerial staff; they pay various amounts depend-
ent on the amount of excess profits which the Control
Board and the Labour Government have allowed
tiem to accumulate in the space of eleven months of
the year.

7.00 p.m.

Now, their ability to make large disburse-
ments at Christmas time does not spring from any
conversion to christianity on their part; its springs,
as I have said before, from the desire naturally, on
their part, because of the hegemony under which
we are suffering at this time of our history to pay
as little money into the Public Treasury as they
legally are allowed to pay. That is their first instinct
and this instinct is.engrained in the economic life
of every citizen, so to speak, during the last five
years. They are saying: ‘‘I am not paying into the
Public Treasury more than I have to pay because
it is going to be squandered.’’ In the second place,
they are able to pay this large bonus at Christmas
time for the simple reason that there is an increment
incurring to the financial assets of the firm during
the course of the year which is not provided for
even in their wage structure or their demands for
mortgage and capital outlay; in other words, the
excess profits are due to the fact that they are pay-
ing out to the workers less money during the course
of the year and the Christmas bonus then becomes a
deferred payment of wages.

In so far as the Government is concerned, the
only undertaking which it has of a commercial nature
is the Transport Board and we all know that that
Board will not be able to pay out a bonus this year.
We know that. Government is not of a commerical
nature and the people who work in Government can-,
not stake their claim to a deferred payment on the
same consideration which would prompt the clerical
worker in Broad Street to make his demand. But
there are other considerations. This Government -has
thought fit that any one working for $180 a month,
whether he be in a profit making concern like the
General Post Office or in a department like the Hdu-
cation Department or the Waterworks Department
which operating on a profit and loss basis cannot
possibly pay for itself—without any distinction be-
tween Department and Department—has elected in
its wisdom end succumbed to the blandishments of
certain officers of the colony a few years ago and
top-ranking Civil Servants to pay to those particu-
lar officers working for more than $400 a month a
deferred payment so that they can. go on holiday.
I challenge anyone to say that it is not a deferred
payment you pay him every three and a half years
in the form of leave passages for himself and his
wife. Leave Passage means a minimum of £400 given
to those employees who get over $180 a month for
every three and a half years of service. Let me say
that before the Labour Government came into power
in Barbados, no one thought that the climate of the
colony was inimical to the upper branches of the
Civil Service so that any one of them could claim,
as they do in Africa, that the climate is so inimical to
them that they need this deferred payment by the
granting of a leave passage to allow them to go back
home to recuperate. We have a policy laid down by
this Government that the basic needs of a human
beings are food, shelter and clothing. You get this
Government deciding though it had said so, that
Civil Servants who work for more than $180 a month
should ‘have: ‘a deferred payment of 25% of their

salary given to them once every four years; that is,.

at the end of 314 years they go on six months vaca-

OFFICIAL GAZETTE

255

 

tion and get something like £400. By simple arith-
metic it works out to 25% of their salary per annum.

This Government has also decided to give to
another section of the people of the colony, the agri-
cultural workers, especially at election time, a 19%
deferred payment although they are. represented by
a strong and virile Trade Union; therefore we take
it that they get the maximum to whica their labours
entitle them, taking into consideration the state of
the sugar industry.

_ Now, let us start with these assumptions. We
start with the assumption of good wages being paid
because of the revision of wages among the sugar in-
dustry. You start with the assumption that the
Trade Union is already, getting for the workers a
fair and just proportion of the profits which were

‘and are being made by the sugar industry of Bar-

|

bados, and at election time you get Government
seeing to it that the sugar workers get this 19% de-
ferred payment. Speaking of that new principle
which Government has established, we have then at
one side of the stage, the Government deciding for
their own employees a deferred payment. We have
as well a permanent system in the sugar industry
whereby the agriculiural workers get a deferred
payment. Whether they get it in September or De-
cember (it is for some mysterious reason not un-
related to the election date) is a matter of supreme
indifference to'me, but it is a fact that after June
they get a deferred payment although they are well
organised ,in a Trade Union'and | although their
average wages are far in excess of the’ average can-
tonnier who working for the Barbados Government
gets less than $11.60 a week of which $1.60 is cost
of living bonus. I will not refer to people like jani-
tors because they get. less than ’$7 a week.

_ It is elementary, Mr. Speaker, that human re-
quirements being more or less similar between per-
son and person, and country and country, that when
a man has an income which will provide him with the
basic requirements and leave him with an’ excess over
and above his basic requirements, he has an element
of choice in the disposal of that part of his income
over his basic requirements. It may sound to somé
hon. members as if I am theorising but I am quite
serious: A’ man who is working for $6.50 a'week hag
no element of choice in the disposal of his income
because he has no excess income. A man who. works
for $180 per month has an element of choice in the
disposal of his income, but a man working for, $45
per month has no element of choice in the disposal
of his income. :

7.10 p.m. :

His income is disposed of for him the minute
he wakes up in the morning and demands his break-
fast because his whole purchasing ‘power is consumed
by basic requirements. If we accept therefore the
fact that we are living in a Christian community and
that we have acquired the habit’ of increased spend-
ing at Christmas time, and that you recognise moral
obligations both to your friends and to your family
and to those who work for you and with you at this
time of the year which you are content ‘to ignore
for the rest of the year, it means a mati working
for $11.60 a week—and I would go so far to say
aman working for less than $180 a month—cannot
give play to his desire to participate in the season

‘of goodwill ‘to the extent to which he would like or
vat all.

He has not got any ‘scope to allow himself to
feel the same human being ‘as the man ‘who gets a
leave passage every four years or three and a half
years; he does not get leave passage at all; he has
not got that to look forward to. Every year in the
United Kingdom, so great is the increase in the
circulation of British Treasury notes that the Treas-
ury has to issue £25 million at the beginning of
December which they call back in during the