AM­BI­KA JA­GAS­SARS­INGH

Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al of the Na­tion­al Trade Union Cen­tre (NATUC), Michael An­nisette, says Gov­ern­ment was neg­li­gent in set­tling salary ne­go­ti­a­tions over the last decade.

This, as An­nisette re­spond­ed to Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert's main­te­nance of a 4% wage of­fer to pub­lic ser­vants, say­ing an ad­di­tion­al raise for back­pay in­ter­est was not fea­si­ble.

“One must un­der­stand that this col­lec­tive agree­ment goes back to 10 or 12 years in some in­stances, and that is why you have the ac­cu­mu­la­tion of the fig­ures that the Min­is­ter is talk­ing about,” An­nisette stat­ed.  

“If you are a gov­ern­ment and if you are op­er­at­ing the in­dus­try or run­ning a gov­ern­ment prop­er­ly, you must un­der­stand that you have a com­mit­ment to pay liv­ing wages—de­cent wages—to your em­ploy­ees,” he added.

The trade union boss says more dis­cus­sions will take place be­tween the union body and its mem­bers on the way for­ward.

“We would be meet­ing Thurs­day, which is the lead­er­ship with the meet­ing Thurs­day to sit down and plan a sus­tain­able ac­tion plan that will demon­strate the dis­af­fec­tion and the deep con­cerns of work­ers over the in­sen­si­tiv­i­ty on the cal­lous­ness of this gov­ern­ment,” he said.

Talks be­tween the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer and trade unions be­gan in late March-ear­ly April 2022. Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley re­cent­ly told pub­lic ser­vants that Gov­ern­ment can set­tle out­stand­ing wage ne­go­ti­a­tions with them, but they must ac­cept the State’s avail­able fund­ing.

Trade unions held mas­sive demon­stra­tions in Au­gust, un­der­scor­ing their re­fusal to ac­cept the CPO’s 4% of­fer.

They al­so sent a clear mes­sage to the Prime Min­is­ter that they had no in­ten­tion of re­turn­ing to NTAC—the Na­tion­al Tri­par­tite Ad­vi­so­ry Coun­cil.  In their joint state­ment, the trade unions stat­ed cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly that the Gov­ern­ment failed to op­er­ate in good faith with the Coun­cil.