When Min­is­ter of Fi­nance, Win­ston Dook­er­an, re­ferred the dis­pute in­volv­ing pub­lic ser­vants' terms and con­di­tions of em­ploy­ment to the Spe­cial Tri­bunal on March 18, all 33,000 of those af­fect­ed must have de­spaired.Pub­lic ser­vants must have feared a pro­tract­ed pe­ri­od of ne­go­ti­a­tion at this spe­cial­ist arm of the In­dus­tri­al Court, fol­lowed by an out­come that might have been re­mark­ably sim­i­lar to the fi­nal of­fer made by the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer, who rep­re­sents the Gov­ern­ment in ne­go­ti­a­tions with pub­lic of­fi­cers.As it stands, the of­fer ac­cept­ed by Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) boss, Wat­son Duke, yes­ter­day looks quite sim­i­lar to fi­nal of­fer pre­sent­ed by the CPO on March 1-with some im­por­tant sweet­en­ers.The fi­nal of­fer was for a five per cent in­crease for the pe­ri­od Jan­u­ary 1, 2008 to De­cem­ber 31, 2010 with two per cent be­ing paid in the first year, one per cent in the sec­ond year and two per cent in the third year.

The fi­nal of­fer al­so in­clud­ed the con­sol­i­da­tion of the ex­ist­ing Cost of Liv­ing Al­lowance (CO­LA) of $125 per month with the pub­lic ser­vant's salary as at De­cem­ber 31, 2007. A new month­ly CO­LA for­mu­la of $125 in the first year, $125 in the sec­ond year and $135 is added to the base salary in­creas­es of five per cent and a lump­sum of $2,000 was then added and com­pound­ed.The pro­pos­al ac­cept­ed by the PSA-af­ter six months of ag­gres­sive talk and var­i­ous days of protest with spe­cial­ly as­signed colours-en­hanced in­sur­ance cov­er­age and the pro­vi­sion of hous­ing.The fact that Duke set­tled for the five per cent that had been on the ta­ble for months (plus the en­hance­ments) would come as a dis­ap­point­ment to many of the pub­lic ser­vants who fol­lowed the trade union leader.

But those who feel that their union be­trayed them should re­al­ly be look­ing at the big­ger pic­ture: Nei­ther side walked away from the ne­go­ti­a­tion get­ting every­thing they want­ed. And the trade union was ob­vi­ous­ly swayed by the Gov­ern­ment's in­sis­tence that the of­fer of five per cent was pre­sent­ed against a back­ground of the eco­nom­ic re­al­i­ties fac­ing T&T to­day and the need to sta­bilise the econ­o­my and en­cour­age growth.The fact that Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar was able to bro­ker this agree­ment with the PSA af­ter one meet­ing is a huge feath­er in her cap and in the caps of her col­lab­o­ra­tors.It con­sol­i­dates her rep­u­ta­tion-fol­low­ing the San Fer­nan­do doc­tors and the Caribbean Air­lines dis­putes-as some­one who is able to me­di­ate seem­ing­ly in­tractable dif­fer­ences be­tween and among groups with wide­ly di­ver­gent in­ter­ests.The PSA ne­go­ti­a­tion was one of three is­sues that sapped the con­fi­dence of the pri­vate sec­tor and con­strained new in­vest­ment by ei­ther lo­cals or for­eign­ers in T&T.

We call on the Prime Min­is­ter to use her new-found skills in con­flict res­o­lu­tion to bring im­me­di­ate clo­sure to the pay­ment of lo­cal and for­eign con­trac­tors and to the pol­i­cy­hold­ers who in­vest­ed about $10 bil­lion in Cli­co prod­ucts.In par­tic­u­lar, the Gov­ern­ment is fac­ing a bar­rage of lit­i­ga­tion in the Cli­co mat­ter, which is un­like­ly to end well for it and there­fore the na­tion. This, plus the huge ex­pense of the Col­man Com­mis­sion of En­quiry in­volv­ing, as it does, dozens of at­tor­neys, make it im­per­a­tive for the Prime Min­is­ter to in­ter­vene quick­ly in an­oth­er mat­ter that has re­mained stuck at the Min­istry of Fi­nance for far too long.It's clear that the PSA dis­pute was re­solved by some out-of-the-box think­ing, the set­ting aside of egos, how­ev­er bruised, and the abil­i­ty to lis­ten and learn.In the na­tion­al in­ter­est, the Prime Min­is­ter should al­so em­ploy these skills in the dis­putes with the con­trac­tors and the pol­i­cy­hold­ers.