To­day's Ed­i­to­r­i­al

The con­tention be­tween the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) and the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fice (CPO) is brew­ing and threat­en­ing to erupt in­to a se­ri­ous stand-off be­tween the Gov­ern­ment and or­gan­ised labour. And we say or­gan­ised labour be­cause the non-PSA unions have in­di­cat­ed they are stand­ing with the pub­lic ser­vants, many of the unions hav­ing their own cur­rent ne­go­ti­a­tions or those com­ing soon. The ex­pe­ri­enced unions and their ex­ec­u­tives un­der­stand quite clear­ly that when trends are set in one part of the pub­lic ser­vice, those set­tle­ments will dic­tate the way for­ward all around and so the unions do them­selves a favour by stand­ing in sol­i­dar­i­ty with each oth­er to get the best pack­ages.

It goes al­most with­out say­ing that giv­en the state of the na­tion­al econ­o­my, still very much in re­cov­ery mode from the re­ces­sion of the last two years, the last thing re­quired at the mo­ment is a pro­longed in­dus­tri­al dis­pute spread across sev­er­al sec­tors of the econ­o­my hav­ing the ef­fect of stalling eco­nom­ic pro­duc­tion. Per­haps with this pos­si­bil­i­ty in mind, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Win­ston Dook­er­an, an econ­o­mist by train­ing and pur­suit, was dri­ven to ex­press the view/hope in his 2011 bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion that the pub­lic sec­tor ne­go­ti­a­tions would be set­tled by the end of this year. But with the ex­pe­ri­ences of the last cou­ple weeks, the min­is­ter may now be re­cal­cu­lat­ing such a pro­jec­tion.

On the one hand, PSA pres­i­dent Wat­son Duke has been talk­ing about a 15 per cent set­tle­ment over the three years of the agree­ment. The CPO, on the oth­er hand, is stand­ing res­olute at one per cent over the same three-year pe­ri­od. There is ob­vi­ous­ly quite an amount of un­chart­ed ter­ri­to­ry in-be­tween those two po­si­tions and to hope to close the gap in two months must be un­re­al­is­tic. Now added to that un­re­al­ism is the re­port­ed po­si­tion of the CPO, that is ac­cord­ing to the PSA pres­i­dent. As Mr Duke tells it, one week the CPO wants to fo­cus on set­tling al­lowances first and then the fol­low­ing week wants to first set­tle salaries.

Such a danc­ing around would give cre­dence to the view that in­stead of at­tempt­ing to close the gap be­tween of­fer and de­mand, the CPO seems to be play­ing for time or at­tempt­ing to frus­trate the unions. At the meet­ing and demon­stra­tion of this week, even gov­ern­ment-ap­point­ed sen­a­tor David Ab­du­lah was moved to de­scribe the of­fer of the CPO as provoca­tive and dis­re­spect­ful, with sim­i­lar and even stronger sen­ti­ments be­ing ex­pressed by oth­er labour lead­ers. What must hap­pen to avoid the bub­bling con­flict is for the Gov­ern­ment to place a se­ri­ous of­fer on the ta­ble, one which could be hon­est­ly dis­cussed by the two sides. In­deed, Mr Duke com­mit­ted him­self to ne­go­ti­at­ing in good faith when a "rea­son­able of­fer" is made.

It seems a log­i­cal po­si­tion for the trade union­ist to take. This news­pa­per is ob­vi­ous­ly not in a po­si­tion and does not have any de­sire or in­ter­est to tell the Gov­ern­ment and CPO what con­sti­tutes a "rea­son­able of­fer." How­ev­er, if they are to be re­al­is­tic, the cur­rent pro­pos­al has lit­tle chance of se­ri­ous­ly en­tic­ing the unions to the bar­gain­ing ta­ble for mean­ing­ful dis­cus­sion. On the oth­er hand, all of the labour lead­ers must be cog­nisant of the fact that the econ­o­my is not in the shape it was two years ago, rev­enues are no longer flow­ing at the lev­el of US$140 a bar­rel for oil and US$15 for nat­ur­al gas, and so too have the prices in the petro­chem­i­cal sec­tor de­clined dra­mat­i­cal­ly. And while it seems a lit­tle scare-mon­ger­ing to say that the deficit would reach $12 bil­lion if agree­ment is reached on the PSA's terms, the union must recog­nise that it al­so has a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to pro­tect the jobs of its mem­bers.