TRADE unions are rejecting the Finance Minister's public offer of a five per cent increase for the January 2020-December 2022 bargaining period.
During his budget presentation in Parliament on September 30, Colm Imbert said he had instructed the Chief Personnel Officer (CPO) to start wage negotiations with public-sector unions with a five per cent offer.
The Trinidad and Tobago Unified Teachers' Association (TTUTA) was among the first to reject what it termed "negotiations by public decree.
"This notion by the Finance Minister, and by extension the government, to publicly state a final offer in the public domain and to believe that the association would accede to this offer is outrageous and callous," TTUTA president Martin Lum Kin told Newsday on October 1.
Teachers, police, prison officers, the defence force and daily-paid workers got their last salary increase of four per cent for the January 2014-December 2019 period.
All the representing unions, with the exception of the Public Services Association (PSA) and the National Union of Government and Federated Workers (NUGFW), accepted the offer. Those two matters are before the Industrial Court as a dispute.
Imbert said that while the four per cent offer was not a lot, considering it was for a six-year period, it was all the government could offer at the time, and this was done at a cost of over $1 billion in back pay and increase in recurrent annual expenditure by hundreds of millions of dollars.
Most workers, except those represented by the PSA and NUGFW, have received their increases and back pay.
Urging the PSA and NUGFW to accept the offer and move on, Imbert said he could not allow these two unions to delay continuing negotiations for the next bargaining period, and has instructed the CPO to make the necessary preparations to start negotiating with those trade unions which accepted the previous four per cent and offer five per cent for the new period.
“For this next three-year period – 2020-2022 – the government, even in the face of our challenging financial circumstances, has decided to offer public-sector workers an increase of five per cent.
“This increase is estimated to cost the government an additional $475 million per year in recurrent expenditure, with back pay up to the end of 2024 estimated at over $1 billion. It will be difficult to find the money to make these payments, but we think it is only fair and just.”
Lum Kin accused government “of seeking to circumvent the established methodology of bilateral negotiations between the CPO and the relevant recognised association."
Critical of the method used to start negotiations, Lum Kin said, “One must be reminded that the established methodology of the external labour market survey which does not utilise the percentage increase, but closure of the gap in the market has been recognised by the CPO as the best method of salary negotiations.
“TTUTA calls on government to desist from this unacceptable approach and to return to good industrial relations practice.”
Prison Officers'
