Once upon a time, long ago and far away, as the story goes, girls were thought by the men who developed curricula not to be good at math. That was before Kristalina Georgieva rose from being the CEO of the World Bank to becoming the MD of the IMF, succeeding Christine Legarde, who managed to be both head of the IMF and the EGB.

Girls were encouraged to do “domestic or household science,” or in some cases, Latin or Greek in secondary school, rather than mathematics, algebra , geometry, or calculus.

And don’t even mention non-Euclidean geometry. That would have been like going past Newtonian physics into string theory, which hadn’t even been developed.

The curriculum designers were apparently oblivious to the fact that household management was redolent with arithmetical imperatives such as budgeting, sourcing preferential consumer variables, cost control, as well as sociology, conflict and household management, supply chain processes and, as one teacher wryly put it “how to make a dollar stretch a mile.”

[caption id="attachment_948531" align="alignnone" width="1024"] In this file photo public servants head to work at the Inland Revenue Division, Port of Spain. -[/caption]

So when I spent all those years in the Senate I decided to focus on issues of most concern to women. You know: crime, cost of living, equity in employment, education reform and domestic and other kinds of violence such as that that enters into wage negotiations. Basic survival issues.

So it is not surprising that, despite my at-times arithmetical shortcomings, I am fascinated by the announcement on April 1 this year from the office of the CPO stating that on the instructions of the Minister of Finance, the Honourable Colm Imbert, the CPO, a former military commander, would begin negotiations this week for approximately 90,000 government workers.

The word “approximately” is used, because the Industrial Relations Act does not include, under the definition of “worker” – Section 4 (a), (b),(c) and (d) if you want to check, people who work for the police, fire services, prison, regiment, municipalities, estate and rural constables, teachers and employees of the Central Bank. They are covered by their own rules and regulations, as government employees always seem to be, but the CPO may be negotiating for some of them as well. At any rate, the government still has to find cash to pay them, so he might as well. If he doesn’t, Mr Imbert will have to.

Government employees are what is known as “cost-centric” employees. They cost their employer (the government) but do not bring in income other than stamp duties, licensing fees, etc. They are not “income-centric,” bringing in enough money to pay for their own salaries and wages, the rental and maintenance of the buildings and vehicles they work in, utilities such as water telephones, insurance, stationery materials and equipment, internet and electricity and so on and on.

Do not forget, out of the 1.4 million people in this country, according to the NIB only a little fewer than 405,000 are wo