Ani­ka Gumbs-San­di­ford

The Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion's (PSA) de­ci­sion to ac­cept a five per cent wage set­tle­ment with Gov­ern­ment-which is es­ti­mat­ed to cost $600 mil­lion-is now be­ing termed a "sell out."The ac­cu­sa­tion was lev­elled against PSA pres­i­dent Wat­son Duke by an­gry pub­lic ser­vants and union lead­ers yes­ter­day. They are call­ing for Duke, who they said act­ed in a "high hand­ed man­ner" to ten­der his res­ig­na­tion im­me­di­ate­ly.Mean­while, union lead­ers, po­lit­i­cal an­a­lysts and econ­o­mists who have es­ti­mat­ed the pro­pos­al to cost in ex­cess of $600 mil­lion have all ex­pressed shock by the overnight turn of events.

And, while Duke has jus­ti­fied his de­ci­sion to ac­cept the pro­pos­al that is cush­ioned with hous­ing and in­sur­ance ben­e­fits, Sun­day Guardian learnt that the shock­ing de­vel­op­ment has caused emo­tions to run high among sev­er­al mem­bers of the gen­er­al coun­cil, lead­ing to a face-off be­tween PSA as­sis­tant sec­re­tary Joanne Capirette and Duke.Not mix­ing words, for­mer PSA staff rep­re­sen­ta­tive Mer­lin Bar­row blast­ed Duke say­ing: "That is a sell out! Duke has to go. He had peo­ple in a cha­rade up and down the coun­ty. It is a sell out. We hope pub­lic ser­vants wake up now."

For­mer PSA head, Jen­nifer Bap­tiste-Primus al­so ac­cused Duke of be­tray­ing pub­lic ser­vants."It is a com­plete sell out...it is in­cred­i­ble. He is mis­lead­ing mem­bers with re­gard to this mil­lion-dol­lar med­ical cov­er­age; since 2009 the month­ly pre­mi­um was in­creased. Duke is mis­lead­ing pub­lic ser­vants." At­tempt­ing to make sense of the hasti­ly made de­ci­sion, econ­o­mist Dr Dhanayshar Ma­habir said the gloomy state of the econ­o­my may have been a fac­tor.

How­ev­er, Ma­habir said Gov­ern­ment need­ed to pro­ceed with cau­tion re­gard­ing the debt to fa­cil­i­tate this mil­lion-dol­lar pay­out. "The prob­lem is the pub­lic debt. The pub­lic ser­vice debt would have to in­crease to al­most $7 bil­lion to com­pen­sate pub­lic ser­vants. This is some­thing they need to be wary about. The Min­is­ter of Fi­nance needs to break his si­lence on this mat­ter now."

Unions to Govt:PSA is no bench­mark

Stunned by the wage agree­ment, Pres­i­dent of Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Work­ers Union Joseph Re­my warned Gov­ern­ment against us­ing PSA as a bench­mark to set­tle oth­er wage ne­go­ti­a­tions."We are quite sur­prised and are still try­ing to in­ter­nalise the sud­den about turn by the PSA in re­spect to the wage ne­go­ti­a­tions. What is re­al­ly alarm­ing is that it was done with­out giv­ing con­sid­er­a­tion to con­sult with fel­low trade union lead­ers who took a unit­ed stand notwith­stand­ing how oth­er peo­ple felt. We took a unit­ed stand as trade union­ists that five per cent was not enough for any pub­lic ser­vant and by ex­ten­sion work­ers."The Na­tion­al Trade Union Cen­tre who rep­re­sents dai­ly rat­ed work­ers and those on con­tract and Gen­er­al Work­ers Union came out in full sup­port of the PSA's plan of a mas­sive shut down lat­er this month to re­ject the five per cent wage of­fer by Gov­ern­ment.How­ev­er, the PSA has opt­ed to set­tle for the wage pro­pos­al and oth­er ben­e­fits.

Re­my added: "The PSA has placed oth­er trade unions who are in the stage of col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing in a dif­fi­cult po­si­tion. PSA is the largest em­ploy­ee body and there are those who may feel this can be used as a bench­mark. We are aware of the eco­nom­ic sit­u­a­tion but work­ers are vi­tal. We are not go­ing to set­tle for the five per cent of­fer; we dis­agree strong­ly with that agree­ment be­cause it is not go­ing to au­gur well with the work­ing class."Pres­i­dent of the Oil­field Work­ers Trade Union An­cil Ro­get has al­so open­ly ex­pressed his dis­ap­proval over the five per cent agree­ment. Yes­ter­day sources said Duke has pro­ceed­ed on va­ca­tion and may have trav­elled abroad.

Deal shocks po­lit­i­cal an­a­lysts

Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lysts who ad­mit­ted to be tak­en aback by the overnight turn of events said de­tails of such an agree­ment need to be made pub­lic.A shocked Dr Sel­wyn Ryan said: "I am very, very sur­prised. On the face of it, it looks con­struc­tive but it de­pends on the de­tails be­cause you have to weigh the mon­e­tary and so­cial as­pect of it and how it is ap­plied."Echo­ing sim­i­lar sen­ti­ments was Dr Bish­nu Ra­goonath who said he was caught com­plete­ly off guard."I am lit­er­al­ly in shock as to the fast set­tle­ment. More facts is def­i­nite­ly need­ed. It is clear the PSA was ne­go­ti­at­ing un­der pres­sure but this about turn is a shock to many."