The Wage Payments Dilemma

The primary issue is not that workers in Honduras get paid puny sums… rather, that they do not get paid consistently and that they have to spend so much of their time, energy and emotional capital fighting for what is owed to them.

A few years ago, I visited a young doctor in the town of Copán Ruinas. She was working at the government health clinic there. She was anxious to leave her position and get a job at a local clinic overseen by a North American non-profit organization, but she was hesitant. You see, the doctor had not been paid by the government for eight months, and she feared that if she resigned she would never see one penny of her back wages. Her sole rationale for staying was a distant hope that she might eventually receive some of the money owed to her.

I returned to Copán Ruinas a year later and found that the doctor was happily working at the non-profit clinic, where she was being paid regularly and on time. The doctor had worked an additional two months at the government clinic before she finally decided she was deluding herself. The woman worked hard for 10 months caring for patients with inadequate equipment and hardly any medications, and was never compensated. How do you figure this?

I think that the fundamental problem with wages in Honduras is that all-too-often people, mainly in the public sector, do not get paid for months. And when people do get paid, they find that their wages are incomplete. But they’re so happy to have received anything that they don’t complain much. The primary issue is not that workers in Honduras get paid puny sums… rather, that they do not get paid consistently and that they have to spend so much of their time, energy and emotional capital fighting for what is owed to them. It doesn’t matter at what level wages are set if the money is not going to be delivered as promised. While there is no doubt that Honduras has cash liquidity problems, the bigger problem has to do with administration and trust.