Although the House of Representatives yesterday approved a bill to increase the minimum wage in Puerto Rico to $ 8.50, the measure was finally on the table, since the Senate did not consider it in the last ordinary session of the Senate. Only if the Governor includes it in a call for an extraordinary session could it be considered again by the legislators.
The measure was from the representative, Joel Franqui Atiles, who filed it in 2019 and even held public hearings, but did not drop to vote until the last day to approve projects on Capitol Hill. According to Franqui Atiles, there is an opening with La Fortaleza for the legislative piece to be included in a possible extraordinary call.
According to the latest version of the measure approved in the House, but not seen by the Senate, the increase in the minimum wage for private sector employees would take effect by 2021.
It was stipulated that there would be an automatic increase in the minimum wage every three years according to the “Consumer Price Index” published by the Planning Board.
Currently, the minimum wage on the Island is $ 7.25. Representative Franqui Aquiles affirms that no one can live in Puerto Rico with only the minimum wage.
In 2017, the “Multisectoral Committee to Increase the Minimum Wage” was created, under the Planning Board (JP), which pointed out that an increase in the minimum wage would negatively impact Puerto Rico’s real Gross National Product (GNP) . Economists and private sector voices oppose an increase in the minimum wage due to the impact on the cost of doing business in Puerto Rico. However, in 2016 the economics professor José Caraballo Cueto published research that pointed to the positive effects of an increase in the minimum wage in Puerto Rico.
“On the one hand, some pro-worker groups in Puerto Rico assure that the $ 15 per hour is adequate and on the other hand, some conservative groups consider that the current minimum wage should be lowered. However, neither of these two proposals seem to find support in the data: when I update the last increase in the minimum wage to 2015, I find that the minimum wage in Puerto Rico should be $ 8.61 per hour. It is important to pursue that optimal minimum wage to improve the economic inequality that exists in Puerto Rico, which is among the worst in the world, ”said the also doctor of economics in a statement in which the findings of his research were published four years ago. .
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