The Employment (Protection of Employee Tips and Other Gratuities) Amendment Act 2023 and the procedural guidance for determining the distribution of tips and other gratuities came into effect on March 1.

It was stated then that the Amendment Act passed in 2023 ensured the fair distribution of employee tips and other gratuities. The new law prohibits employers and their directors and shareholders from sharing in any tips, tip pool or any other gratuities unless they regularly perform, to a substantial degree, the same work performed by some or all the employees who share in the tips, tip pool or redistribution of other gratuities. (As per Public Advisory/Legislation to protect employee tips and other gratuities/29.2.24).

It was stated that it is required by law that all employers who regularly receive tips and other gratuities must have a policy statement that advises on the management of tips and how other gratuities are collected and redistributed.

The minimum wage was increased in Bermuda on June 1, 2023, and the minimum rate per hour was capped at $16.40. This was a longstanding request for quite a few years and the Government stated that it was committed to increasing the minimum wage over time to help employees maintain a reasonable standard of living. The Government's plan is to link the minimum-wage increases to the Consumer Price Index to help it keep pace with inflation. The increases will be capped at a maximum of 5 per cent, or 2.5 per cent per year for two years.

It was further stated that while the establishment of a minimum hourly wage in Bermuda was a significant step towards ensuring fair compensation for employees and the reduction of income equality, a further step needs to be taken to ensure that employees can maintain a reasonable standard of living and their purchasing power is not diminished while the cost of everyday goods and services rise. It was stated that the Government supports the position paper’s proposal to progress the statutory minimum hourly wage rate every two years by the annual average rate of inflation, using the CPI as the indicative measure, capped at 2.5 per cent per year. It is also determined that the newly proposed statutory minimum wage rate will be adjusted in 2025, and will be between $16.81 and $17.23.

As the new rate was applied, it was also discovered that employers did not adhere to the instructions and continued in their deductions of employee gratuities and keeping the same for themselves or in other cases applying the new rate of $16.40 — inclusive of the gratuities — and then applied the regulated deductions, thus reducing the hourly rate to less than the old minimum-wage rate.

This situation has been unattainable, to say the least, as employees in the hospitality industry have ended up working for far less, but the rate of inflation continues to rise. This has been the consensus across the industry since the introduction of the new minimum hourly rate of $16.40.

During this same period, there has never been any form of enforcement in the process to protect the employee, even though the Government was made aware of growing abuse by employers.

It is quite abhorrent to see comments stating that employers must now pay workers 100 per cent of their gratuities. What happened to the enforcement over the past 20 months? Why didn’t the Government institute this instruction then?

As usual, and being quite obvious as a General Election looms, the Government wants to appear to be doing something for the labour force — just like everything else that has occurred this week. All of sudden, after years of constant neglect, the Government wants to appear that it is injecting monies into capital projects, and helping those in the service industry.

Does government hypocrisy know no bounds?

The citizens of Bermuda are no longer blind to the optics; they are no longer buying into the rhetoric of the Government as it pretends to care about the people by effecting repairs and pushing for enforcement in areas that should have been in place from the inception of change.

• Carl Neblett is the approved One Bermuda Alliance candidate for Sandys North (Constituency 36)