Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­ton@guardian.co.tt

An­oth­er group of work­ers is be­ing of­fered a 10 per cent wage in­crease.

This, af­ter chief per­son­nel of­fi­cer (CPO) Dr Daryl Din­di­al con­firmed that he, yes­ter­day, made a pro­posed wage set­tle­ment of­fer val­ued at $2.6 bil­lion to the Na­tion­al Union of Gov­ern­ment and Fed­er­at­ed Work­ers (NUGFW), struc­tured through a com­bi­na­tion of cash and non-cash ben­e­fits to man­age the State’s fis­cal bur­den.

Din­di­al said the of­fer, which spans a 12-year pe­ri­od, car­ries a re­cur­rent an­nu­al cost of ap­prox­i­mate­ly $250 mil­lion, mak­ing fis­cal re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and pay­ment flex­i­bil­i­ty cen­tral to the ne­go­ti­a­tions.

“The of­fer in­cludes a mix of cash and non-cash,” Din­di­al said.

“That is im­por­tant be­cause the Gov­ern­ment must act re­spon­si­bly. There is a deficit we have to treat with, and the State must main­tain the abil­i­ty to meet its oth­er com­mit­ments while set­tling out­stand­ing wage dis­putes.”

The pro­pos­al mir­rors agree­ments al­ready ac­cept­ed by oth­er pub­lic sec­tor unions and is struc­tured as one per cent in­creas­es an­nu­al­ly from 2014 to 2018, fol­lowed by five per cent in the fi­nal year, 2019, along with the con­sol­i­da­tion of the Cost-of-Liv­ing Al­lowance (CO­LA) on two oc­ca­sions, in­creas­ing CO­LA from $9 to $11 by the end of col­lec­tive agree­ment pe­ri­od be­ing ne­go­ti­at­ed.

Ac­cord­ing to the NUGFW, when CO­LA con­sol­i­da­tion is fac­tored in, the av­er­age in­crease across grades for its 17,000 mem­bers will be ap­prox­i­mate­ly 13.5 per cent, ris­ing to 14.5 to 15 per cent in some cat­e­gories.

Din­di­al said ar­rears un­der the agree­ment are es­ti­mat­ed at ap­prox­i­mate­ly $1 bil­lion in cash, and the CPO’s Of­fice has pro­posed spread­ing pay­ments over two fi­nan­cial years—about $500 mil­lion per year—to re­duce the im­me­di­ate im­pact on pub­lic fi­nances.

“This ap­proach min­imis­es cash out­flow while al­low­ing Gov­ern­ment to con­tin­ue ad­dress­ing oth­er na­tion­al pri­or­i­ties and strength­en­ing rev­enue col­lec­tion,” he said.

If the agree­ment is signed this week, Din­di­al con­firmed that new salary rates would be im­ple­ment­ed af­ter the mid-year fis­cal re­view, with the sup­port of the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance, as the ad­just­ments were not pre­vi­ous­ly bud­get­ed.

Re­spond­ing to the of­fer, NUGFW pres­i­dent gen­er­al Christo­pher Street yes­ter­day said the union was en­cour­aged by the scale of the pro­pos­al, par­tic­u­lar­ly af­ter years of eco­nom­ic strain on dai­ly-rat­ed work­ers.

“I am elat­ed and ex­cit­ed, es­pe­cial­ly for work­ers who have suf­fered for the last 12 years,” Street said.

“I want to thank our mem­bers for their pa­tience and for not forc­ing this union in­to ac­cept­ing four per cent. That pa­tience has been re­ward­ed.”

Street said while the union wel­comed the 10 per cent of­fer, mi­nor is­sues re­main and would be re­viewed in­ter­nal­ly be­fore any agree­ment is fi­nalised. He em­pha­sised that the union’s lead­er­ship at all lev­els par­tic­i­pat­ed di­rect­ly in the talks.

“This is a de­mo­c­ra­t­ic union,” he said.

“All the pres­i­dents of our sec­tions, di­vi­sions and branch­es were present. They heard, they ques­tioned, they con­tributed—and we will now re­turn to our mem­ber­ship.”

De­scrib­ing the ne­go­ti­a­tions as a nec­es­sary ex­er­cise in com­pro­mise, Street said the pro­posed in­crease rep­re­sents “a new chap­ter” for dai­ly-rat­ed work­ers, many of whom last re­ceived min­i­mal wage ad­just­ments in ??/.

Din­di­al al­so praised the union’s lead­er­ship, not­ing the im­por­tance of ex­pe­ri­enced rep­re­sen­ta­tion in reach­ing sus­tain­able agree­ments.

“They are the blue-col­lar work­ers of the State—of­ten un­seen and un­heard, but es­sen­tial to na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment,” he said.

Both sides ac­knowl­edged that the NUGFW is the fi­nal out­stand­ing pub­lic sec­tor union for the 2014-2019 ne­go­ti­a­tion pe­ri­od, with Cab­i­net hav­ing al­ready rat­i­fied agree­ments for oth­er unions.

“Once the NUGFW signs off, there will be no out­stand­ing pub­lic ser­vice ne­go­ti­a­tions. The in­tent is to sign this week,” Din­di­al said.

Street echoed that ex­pec­ta­tion, while stop­ping short of pre-empt­ing the union’s in­ter­nal de­ci­sion-mak­ing.

“When our mem­bers are sat­is­fied, we will sign,” he said.

“And when that hap­pens, the coun­try will know this mat­ter has fi­nal­ly been brought to a close.”

Re­spond­ing to the ne­go­ti­a­tions with the State and the union, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo said, “I await the fi­nal­i­sa­tion of the ne­go­ti­a­tions. How­ev­er, I ex­pect that all ne­go­ti­a­tions will in­clude dis­cus­sions about a mix­ture of cash and non-cash com­po­nents as part of the pay­ment struc­ture.”

The min­is­ter will be the one to pi­lot the in­crease in the mid-year fis­cal re­view lat­er this year.

The NUGFW was the sec­ond ma­jor trade union to be of­fered a 10 per cent wage hike by the Gov­ern­ment.

In No­vem­ber last year, the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion se­cured a 10 per cent wage set­tle­ment that will cost the Gov­ern­ment ap­prox­i­mate­ly $3.8 bil­lion in back­pay. Pub­lic ser­vants re­ceived an ini­tial pay­out of their back­pay in De­cem­ber fol­low­ing that agree­ment. In ad­di­tion to the back­pay, the agree­ment car­ries an on­go­ing an­nu­al cost of around $214 mil­lion, which is added to Gov­ern­ment’s re­cur­rent ex­pen­di­ture once ful­ly im­ple­ment­ed.

De­spite the agree­ment, re­ports in­di­cate that about $730 mil­lion in ar­rears re­main out­stand­ing, sug­gest­ing that the Gov­ern­ment still has sig­nif­i­cant pay­ments to make to ful­fil the full terms of the PSA deal.