GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

Se­nior Re­porter

geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co.tt

As on­go­ing pub­lic sec­tor wage talks re­main cloud­ed in un­cer­tain­ty, gen­er­al sec­re­tary of the Na­tion­al Trade Union Cen­tre (NATUC) Michael An­nisette has em­pha­sised that the Gov­ern­ment’s ten per cent salary in­crease of­fer to pub­lic ser­vice em­ploy­ees is mere­ly a “start­ing point” in the bar­gain­ing process—not a fi­nal deal that guar­an­tees im­me­di­ate re­lief for pub­lic ser­vants.

Fur­ther, re­gard­ing the high­ly an­tic­i­pat­ed ques­tion of pay­ment for pub­lic ser­vants be­fore Christ­mas, An­nisette was non-com­mit­tal, ex­plain­ing that a blan­ket “yes or no” is im­pos­si­ble.

Speak­ing on CNC3’s Morn­ing Brew pro­gramme yes­ter­day, An­nisette sought to dis­pel the no­tion that the ten per cent of­fer—made by the gov­ern­ment in its bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion to re­place the four per cent pro­pos­al—was a done deal.

While he not­ed that unions, in­clud­ing the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) and the Na­tion­al Union of Gov­ern­ment and Fed­er­at­ed Work­ers (NUGFW), ac­cept­ed the “con­cept” of the ten per cent, he un­der­scored that the process must ad­here to the prin­ci­ples of in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions. This re­quires a full ne­go­ti­at­ing process to be fi­nalised, rat­i­fied and signed off on be­fore be­com­ing a le­git­i­mate agree­ment.

“I want to re­mind the gen­er­al pub­lic, the po­si­tion was a ten per cent of­fer, a start­ing of­fer in the con­text of the out­stand­ing ne­go­ti­a­tions. And let me put in the pub­lic do­main, too, that there are more than three col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing pe­ri­ods that are out­stand­ing. So that when we talk about ne­go­ti­a­tions, we are talk­ing about for a 12-year pe­ri­od in some in­stances where work­ers, and in par­tic­u­lar­ly Gov­ern­ment em­ploy­ees, its statu­to­ry boards did not get any wage in­crease,” he said.

The ul­ti­mate goal, he stat­ed, is to se­cure a fi­nal per­cent­age that ac­counts for the se­vere loss of pur­chas­ing pow­er ac­cu­mu­lat­ed over that decade-plus pe­ri­od.

To ex­pe­dite this, the NATUC gen­er­al sec­re­tary is­sued a pub­lic plea for the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer (CPO) to “meet and treat as quick­ly as pos­si­ble” with all out­stand­ing unions rep­re­sent­ing del­e­gat­ed work­ers.

On the is­sue of pos­si­ble pay­ment by Christ­mas, An­nisette cit­ed the com­plex in­ter­nal ad­min­is­tra­tive steps re­quired for back pay, in­clud­ing de­tailed ac­count­ing prin­ci­ples and ad­just­ments, which in­her­ent­ly take time.

“We would like to see if it is fi­nan­cial­ly pos­si­ble, and if the process lends it­self for that pay­ment, be­cause there’s a process to make back­pay. Every­body knows that. You have to do the ac­count­ing prin­ci­ples. You have to go back in­to the times. You have to do the ad­just­ments. That takes some time,” he stressed.

How­ev­er, he sug­gest­ed that a so­lu­tion might in­volve a ne­go­ti­at­ed arrange­ment, such as re­ceiv­ing “part there­of, or a per­cent­age of the amount” to pro­vide im­me­di­ate re­lief to work­ers.

“One would have an­tic­i­pat­ed that if the past gov­ern­ment would have of­fered four per cent, that some process would have been put in place to meet the pay­ment so we are just talk­ing about a six per­cent­age point dif­fer­ence.

“And as I al­ways say, there are ways and means of solv­ing a ne­go­ti­at­ing prob­lem. It doesn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly mean, and I’m speak­ing from a nat­ur­al per­spec­tive, that you will get all your mon­ey from Christ­mas. There can be, for ex­am­ple, an arrange­ment where you get part there­of, or a per cent of the amount to sat­is­fy the work­ers and their needs,” An­nisette ex­plained.

He al­so pushed back against ex­ter­nal spec­u­la­tion on fund­ing, dis­miss­ing ideas from econ­o­mists about a sec­ond bud­get or draw­ing from the Her­itage and Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Fund, main­tain­ing that the method for se­cur­ing and dis­trib­ut­ing the mon­ey—the “col­lat­er­al”—would be de­ter­mined by the “par­ties to the col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing process” at the ta­ble.

“I’m say­ing that there are many dif­fer­ent mech­a­nisms that can be put on the ta­ble in or­der to ad­dress the is­sue of out­stand­ing wages, in­creas­es that have been owed to gov­ern­ment em­ploy­ees. There are sev­er­al dif­fer­ent mech­a­nisms. So let the process go through. Let us dis­cuss the process around the ta­ble rather than hav­ing the spec­u­la­tive,” An­nisette added.

He ar­gued that the en­tire econ­o­my would ul­ti­mate­ly ben­e­fit from the in­jec­tion of cash through back pay, chal­leng­ing any econ­o­mist to de­ny the fun­da­men­tal fact that “eco­nom­ics is about peo­ple” and that work­ers are the dri­vers of con­sump­tion and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty.