Chester Sam­bra­no

Af­ter walk­ing out of the of­fice of the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer (CPO) Daryl Din­di­al, fol­low­ing over four hours of ne­go­ti­a­tions Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) pres­i­dent Leroy Bap­tiste said, "I am okay, I wish I can say I am more than okay but I am okay."

But as he re­count­ed de­tails of the meet­ing, that okay turned in­to op­ti­mism.

The PSA pres­i­dent said this new-found op­ti­mism came from the pro­pos­als his ex­ec­u­tive made to the CPO on be­half of pub­lic of­fi­cers.

He said al­though his union had asked for a 19 per cent (9,6,4) in­crease for the pe­ri­od 2014 to 2016, he said some el­e­ments of the pro­pos­al can com­pen­sate for any fi­nan­cial short­fall.

Bap­tiste said that there are eight ar­eas he had asked the CPO and by ex­ten­sion, the Gov­ern­ment to now put fo­cus on.

The first two are se­cur­ing the tenure of of­fi­cers and mak­ing con­tract work­ers per­ma­nent.

"Of­fi­cers are lament­ing that they have been tem­po­rary for years and that needs to be reg­u­larised, they need to be made per­ma­nent in their jobs," he said.

An­oth­er area is a pro­posed health plan which had al­ready been ne­go­ti­at­ed with a pub­lic health care provider.

"And there is no need there­fore to find all of this mon­ey up­front to pay a doc­tor bill or to pay for phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals," he added.

Two oth­er pro­pos­als are for land to be made avail­able for pub­lic of­fi­cers as well as pref­er­en­tial ac­cess to HDC homes.

"Home own­er­ship is one of the must-haves by pub­lic of­fi­cers," he not­ed.

There is al­so the is­sue of tax and du­ty ex­emp­tions on ve­hi­cles.

"To make car own­er­ship less ex­pen­sive for the pub­lic of­fi­cer," Bap­tiste said.

The re­main­ing ar­eas for the Gov­ern­ment's con­sid­er­a­tion are get­ting 'T' ve­hi­cles for trav­el­ling of­fi­cers and for pub­lic of­fi­cers to be­gin to earn va­ca­tion leave.

"On the face of it it is not ex­pen­sive to im­ple­ment those things that would help al­le­vi­ate the hard­ship on pub­lic of­fi­cers," he said.

He said, "So that if you take every­thing and put it in the mix you think you would be in a po­si­tion to be able to say that by the ac­tion of gov­ern­ment they have worked to­wards try­ing to min­imise the im­pact of the cost of liv­ing on the shoul­ders of the pub­lic of­fi­cer."

Bap­tiste said the CPO was re­cep­tive to the pro­pos­als and "he ex­pressed the view that he will in fact ad­vance our po­si­tion to the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance."

He promised to get back to them in two weeks.

With that in mind Bap­tiste had a good feel­ing.

"I am op­ti­mistic, I am op­ti­mistic that with ef­fort and com­mit­ment on the part of the CPO and his staff and gen­uine­ness on the part of the Gov­ern­ment to re­solve the ne­go­ti­a­tions in a man­ner that would not re­sult in ask­ing the pub­lic of­fi­cer to car­ry the bur­den of what­ev­er ad­just­ments in the coun­try on their shoul­ders on­ly, if they en­gage in gen­uine ne­go­ti­a­tions I think we should be able to re­solve it, I am very op­ti­mistic that we should be able to re­solve these ne­go­ti­a­tions."

The PSA pres­i­dent said, how­ev­er, that it was not all smooth sail­ing in the talks.

"And as usu­al he did en­gage in the...he can't help him­self, a lit­tle sub­tle threat in terms of it ought not to go some­where else he would re­mind us...the mil­i­tary in him he al­ways try­ing to end with a threat," Bap­tiste said.

Yes­ter­day's meet­ing was the fifth be­tween the union and the CPO to ne­go­ti­ate for this bar­gain­ing pe­ri­od.

The last of­fer giv­en to the PSA was for a four per cent in­crease over a six-year pe­ri­od.

That had been re­ject­ed by the union.

Oth­er pub­lic sec­tor bod­ies have al­so been of­fered the same four per cent and they are await­ing fur­ther meet­ings with the CPO.