Legislators are to debate a Joint Select Committee’s report on Bermuda adopting a living wage, under a motion approved yesterday by both sides of the House.

David Burt, the Premier, reiterated the Progressive Labour Party’s pledge to implement a living wage in its election platform and latest Throne Speech.

“That is what the people of this country voted for on July 18, and that is what this government will deliver,” he added.

The motion, brought by PLP MP Rolfe Commissiong, would resume work that was begun by a previous committee, but interrupted by the General Election.

Mr Commissiong told Parliament that soaring costs, combined with employers’ easy access to cheap labour from overseas, was pricing local workers out of existence.

In a land of plenty, he said, “children go hungry, and too many hard working parents struggle to survive on wages that have been stagnant or even declining for years in real terms — and, increasingly, wages that do not afford many even the dignity of a decent life”.

Over the last 15 years the ranks of persons on financial assistance had taken on increasing numbers of “non-college educated, low skilled, mostly black Bermudians” who had been “marginalised within our labour market”.

“Secondly, the outward migration of scores of Bermudians to the UK over the last decade is also in part a by-product of a ruinous cost of living on the one hand; meeting low paying jobs that cannot afford an employee a decent standard of living on the other.

“This has produced a continued downward pressure on wages precipitated by the wholesale adoption of foreign low cost labour.

“Thirdly, moreover, the biggest price we pay for this is the millions of dollars that the financial assistance department pays out every year on necessary assistance to the ‘able bodied’ and those in the ‘low earners’ categories.”

Mr Commissiong cited the case of a 26-year-old part-time waitress working 96 hours over two weeks, without health insurance, for $7.50 an hour — with a final taking of $620.

Rising in support, Opposition leader Patricia Gordon-Pamplin recalled in her previous role as minister declining an inappropriate work permit application that would have allowed a worker to be exploited “shamelessly”.

PLP MP Michael Scott noted that many low-income guest workers sent their pay home and paid only contributory rents back into the economy, while many Bermudians chose to emigrate — and One Bermuda Alliance MP Grant Gibbons, voicing his support, cautioned against “unintended consequences” in taking up a living wage, also suggesting the House also take the upcoming Census results into account.