JANELLE BERNARD

Pro­duc­er

Pres­i­dent of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA), Mar­tin Lum Kin, is fierce­ly crit­i­ciz­ing Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert’s an­nounce­ment of a 5-per­cent salary in­crease for pub­lic sec­tor work­ers.

Dur­ing the Bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion on Mon­day, Im­bert said even in the face of chal­leng­ing fi­nan­cial cir­cum­stances, the Gov­ern­ment has de­cid­ed to of­fer a 5-per­cent in­crease, which would cost an ad­di­tion­al $475 mil­lion an­nu­al­ly and could lead to over $1 bil­lion in back-pay by the end of 2024.

Mar­tin Lum Kin con­demned the gov­ern­ment’s de­c­la­ra­tion, say­ing it is not in keep­ing with good in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions prac­tices.

“To pub­licly state a fi­nal of­fer in the pub­lic do­main and to be­lieve that the As­so­ci­a­tion will ac­cede to this of­fi­cer is out­ra­geous and cal­lous,” the TTUTA pres­i­dent stat­ed.

“This gov­ern­ment is seek­ing to cir­cum­vent the es­tab­lished method­ol­o­gy of bi­lat­er­al ne­go­ti­a­tions be­tween the rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the em­ploy­er—the CPO—and the rel­e­vant, recog­nised as­so­ci­a­tion,” he added.

He called on the Gov­ern­ment to re­turn to the es­tab­lished in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions prac­tise, which in­volves util­is­ing and ap­ply­ing the ex­ter­nal labour mar­ket sur­vey to close re­mu­ner­a­tion gaps in the mar­ket—a method­ol­o­gy recog­nised by the CPO.

The Min­is­ter of Fi­nance al­so said that the re­fusal by the PSA and the NUGFW of the 4-per­cent of­fer can­not be al­lowed to de­lay ne­go­ti­a­tions with oth­er unions.

Min­is­ter Im­bert an­nounced the be­gin­ning of ne­go­ti­a­tions for the Jan­u­ary 2020 to De­cem­ber 2022 pe­ri­od with those unions that had ac­cept­ed the pri­or 4-per­cent of­fer.