Agree­ment has been reached be­tween the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion and the T&T Uni­fied Teach­ers' As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) on the way for­ward in their pro­tract­ed wage ne­go­ti­a­tions. This was re­vealed yes­ter­day by Rous­tan Job, pres­i­dent of TTUTA who was speak­ing at the or­gan­i­sa­tion's 33rd An­nu­al Con­fer­ence of Del­e­gates held at Cas­ca­dia Ho­tel and Con­fer­ence Cen­tre in St Ann's.

"TTUTA and the CPO have now agreed on how the Ex­ter­nal Labour Mar­ket (ELM) sur­vey is to be used in or­der to gen­er­ate pos­si­ble set­tle­ment of teacher salaries," he said. "TTUTA will seek to ob­tain teacher salaries which are as close to the ELM sur­vey salaries as is pos­si­ble, es­pe­cial­ly grades 3 and 4."

The ELM is a method­olog­i­cal tool used to de­ter­mine fair wage in­crease and was the source of some con­tention be­tween the par­ties. Job said it was a fact that coun­tries which treat teach­ers as true pro­fes­sion­als have high per­form­ing ed­u­ca­tion sys­tems.

Ad­dress­ing hun­dreds of teach­ers at the con­fer­ence, he said he hoped the union would not have to take the bar­gain­ing process be­yond the ta­ble in an at­tempt to get their just due. And he urged the union's mem­ber­ship to con­tin­ue wear­ing red on Fri­days as a sign of their anger and frus­tra­tion.

Echo­ing state­ments by the union's first vice-pres­i­dent Da­vanand Sinanan, Job said he hoped the ne­go­ti­a­tions with the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer would be re­solved by mid-No­vem­ber. He told the teach­ers, how­ev­er, to be ready for mo­bil­i­sa­tion in the com­ing days and asked the au­thor­i­ty fig­ures to "take a stand for teach­ers" which is the con­fer­ence's theme.

Job told the teach­ers they would con­tin­ue to strive for world-class stan­dards, im­proved teach­ing tech­niques, ze­ro tol­er­ance for neg­a­tive be­hav­iour and vi­o­lence in schools, and im­proved work­ing con­di­tions. Ne­go­ti­a­tions be­tween the union and the CPO have been on­go­ing since 2010. The union held a two-day strike on Sep­tem­ber 11 and 12 this year in protest of the stalled ne­go­ti­a­tions.

Pe­ter Wil­son, TTUTA's sec­re­tary gen­er­al, in a post con­fer­ence in­ter­view al­so said progress was be­ing made in ne­go­ti­a­tions with the CPO. He said he hoped ne­go­ti­a­tion would be com­plet­ed by Christ­mas. The con­fer­ence start­ed yes­ter­day and ends to­mor­row.

Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Tim Gopeesingh de­liv­ered the con­fer­ence's open­ing ad­dress yes­ter­day. "As union mem­bers and lead­ers, you have demon­strat­ed the great­est re­spect for democ­ra­cy and the de­mo­c­ra­t­ic in­sti­tu­tions which gov­ern us, so you are aware that I have ab­solute­ly no say what­so­ev­er in this is­sue, now that it is at a stage of ne­go­ti­a­tions be­tween the in­de­pen­dent union and the equal­ly in­de­pen­dent Chief Per­son­nel Of­fice," Gopeesingh said.

The ed­u­ca­tion min­is­ter asked that the na­tion's chil­dren be put first while a speedy res­o­lu­tion is await­ed. He de­fined TTUTA's an­nu­al con­fer­ence of del­e­gates as "an im­por­tant hall­mark" of the great work teach­ers do. In a tele­phone in­ter­view with the Guardian on Thurs­day, TTUTA's first vice-pres­i­dent Sinanan said ne­go­ti­a­tions should have been com­plet­ed a long time ago but a fair amount of progress was made in the giv­en cir­cum­stances.

The Ex­ter­nal Labour Mar­ket Sur­vey which has been es­sen­tial to the com­ple­tion of the ne­go­ti­a­tions was fi­nal­ly com­plet­ed, he said. He said progress was made at the last meet­ing held with the CPO, on Oc­to­ber 19, and added: "I hope we con­tin­ue to make more progress."