The Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) has ac­cept­ed the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer’s (CPO) five per cent of­fer for the pe­ri­od 2020 to 2023, spread at one per cent, one per cent and three per cent. The Cost of Liv­ing Al­lowance (CO­LA) was al­so ad­just­ed to $51 from Oc­to­ber 31, 2023.

The CPO said the in­crease rep­re­sents a clo­sure of 18.2 per cent in the com­pa­ra­ble mar­ket salary rate for teach­ers. The Teach­ing Ser­vice utilis­es the Ex­ter­nal Labour Mar­ket Sur­vey to as­sess wages.

In a state­ment yes­ter­day, CPO Dr Daryl Din­di­al said ne­go­ti­a­tions, which be­gan in No­vem­ber 2024 and con­tin­ued with sig­nif­i­cant tech­ni­cal sub-com­mit­tee work in­to the new year, were very chal­leng­ing.

He com­mend­ed TTUTA’s lead­er­ship for their per­sis­tence and pro­fes­sion­al­ism in ad­vanc­ing ar­gu­ments for their mem­ber­ship, while al­so in­di­cat­ing he was hum­bled by their “rea­son­able­ness, ra­tio­nal­i­ty and even their un­der­stand­ing of the cur­rent macro­eco­nom­ic re­al­i­ties our na­tion is con­fronting.”

Din­di­al said the pe­ri­od un­der re­view was the COVID-19 pe­ri­od, where the coun­try ex­pe­ri­enced -9.1 per cent, -1.8 per cent (2020-2021) in deficits be­fore ex­pe­ri­enc­ing a + 1.5 per cent in growth in 2022. De­spite this, he said the State main­tained em­ploy­ment lev­els through­out and saw it fit to fur­ther in­crease wages in the Pub­lic Ser­vice. He said the coun­try must not for­get that dur­ing this pe­ri­od, the na­tion’s teach­ers op­er­at­ed in the dual sys­tem of ed­u­ca­tion to sup­port the de­vel­op­men­tal needs of our chil­dren.

The CPO al­so an­nounced that he re­ceived ap­proval from the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance to start the job eval­u­a­tion ex­er­cise for the Teach­ing Ser­vice a year ear­li­er than ini­tial­ly sched­uled. The long-await­ed ex­er­cise is aimed at mod­ernising the com­pen­sa­tion struc­ture and iden­ti­fy­ing changes in the roles of ed­u­ca­tors in the Teach­ing Ser­vice.

Din­di­al said the work with TTUTA is con­tin­u­ous, adding mat­ters re­lat­ing to the group health plan, clas­si­fi­ca­tion of leave, de­ter­mi­na­tion of in­cre­ments, tran­si­tion of the third sched­ule per­son­nel in­to the Teach­ing Ser­vice Com­pen­sa­tion Plan, the up­grade of as­sis­tant teach­ers and train­ing of per­son­nel who ad­min­is­ter terms and con­di­tions at the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly are all be­ing ad­vanced with the sup­port of the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion.

In a state­ment yes­ter­day, TTUTA pres­i­dent Mar­tin Lum Kin said the ne­go­ti­a­tions were car­ried out in a strate­gic man­ner and were thought­ful. The body promised a de­tailed state­ment of all terms and con­di­tions agreed to will be sent lat­er on. It thanked its mem­bers for their pa­tience, sup­port, trust and un­der­stand­ing dur­ing ne­go­ti­a­tions.

Among the unions that have not yet ac­cept­ed the Gov­ern­ment’s of­fer are the Sea­men and Wa­ter­front Work­ers Trade Union, the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion and the Postal Work­ers’ Union.