Akash Sama­roo

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

Lead Ed­i­tor-Pol­i­tics

The “ten per cent” wage ne­go­ti­a­tions be­tween the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) and the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer (CPO) will com­mence to­day at 11 am.

Con­fir­ma­tion came from CPO Com­man­der Dr Daryl Din­di­al, who said yes­ter­day that he had in­vit­ed the PSA to be­gin ne­go­ti­a­tions, an in­vi­ta­tion the union ac­cept­ed.

How­ev­er, while they agreed on a time, Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands the two sides are not aligned on what should be on to­day’s agen­da.

Guardian Me­dia was told that the PSA in­tends to come to the ta­ble with a coun­ter­pro­pos­al to the “ten per cent” of­fer the union claimed it got last Fri­day.

But sources say this has puz­zled the CPO’s of­fice, as it main­tains that no of­fi­cial of­fer was pre­sent­ed to the union dur­ing its meet­ing with act­ing CPO Wendy Bar­ton.

As a re­sult, Guardian Me­dia was told that there could be no counter-pro­pos­al from the union if no for­mal pro­pos­al had yet been made.

Last Fri­day, PSA pres­i­dent Fe­l­isha Thomas, while bran­dish­ing a brown en­ve­lope, tri­umphant­ly de­clared that the “ten per cent” of­fer was made by the CPO and she is con­fi­dent that back­pay can be paid by Christ­mas.

But a well-placed source with­in the CPO’s of­fice said the let­ter in ques­tion does not amount to an of­fi­cial of­fer. In­stead, it sim­ply sig­nalled that a 10 per cent in­crease would be pro­posed, pend­ing ne­go­ti­a­tions.

Ac­cord­ing to in­for­ma­tion ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia, the let­ter stat­ed that the CPO in­tend­ed to put for­ward a ten per cent salary in­crease for em­ploy­ees in the Civ­il Ser­vice, the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly, and the Statu­to­ry Au­thor­i­ties cov­ered un­der the Act for the 2014–2016 and 2017–2019 pe­ri­ods. How­ev­er, it al­so not­ed that the specifics of this pro­posed in­crease still had to be worked out.

Sources stressed that this dif­fers from a for­mal of­fer, which would nor­mal­ly de­tail how the ten per cent would be al­lo­cat­ed across the bar­gain­ing pe­ri­ods, out­line al­lowances and rate ad­just­ments, and pro­vide in­for­ma­tion on CO­LA, trav­el­ling arrange­ments, car loans, tax ex­emp­tions and a re­vised salary sched­ule. Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands none of these el­e­ments were in­clud­ed in Fri­day’s let­ter.

Yes­ter­day, Guardian Me­dia asked Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo what the process would be for dis­burs­ing the funds for back­pay when the ne­go­ti­a­tions are over.

“Af­ter ne­go­ti­a­tions are com­plet­ed, I’ll give you a full roll-out of that,” he said.

Asked if he has the mon­ey to sat­is­fy the back pay, Tan­coo said, “Yes, I do.”

The Fi­nance Min­is­ter was al­so asked if it is fea­si­ble for back­pay to be processed and placed in the ac­counts of pub­lic ser­vants by Christ­mas, as was promised by the PSA pres­i­dent.

“Let’s wait un­til the ne­go­ti­a­tion is com­plet­ed be­fore I make any as­sump­tions and pre­sump­tions,” he said.

Thomas pre­vi­ous­ly told Guardian Me­dia that the ten per cent in­crease was in­tend­ed to cov­er both ne­go­ti­a­tion pe­ri­ods: five per cent for 2014–2016 and an­oth­er five per cent for 2017–2019.