DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

At­tor­ney, in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions spe­cial­ist and for­mer Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) pres­i­dent Clyde Weath­er­head says the Gov­ern­ment can­not uni­lat­er­al­ly dis­burse the pro­posed 40 per cent cash com­po­nent of pub­lic ser­vants’ wage ar­rears with­out an agree­ment with the union.

The Gov­ern­ment al­lo­cat­ed fund­ing for the pay­out in its bud­get, de­spite PSA pres­i­dent Fe­l­isha Thomas re­it­er­at­ing the union’s re­jec­tion of the pro­posed arrange­ment. Un­der the pro­pos­al, 60 per cent of the set­tle­ment would be paid through non-cash ben­e­fits and 40 per cent in cash.

The set­tle­ment is es­ti­mat­ed at $3.8 bil­lion and cov­ers the 2014–2016 and 2017–2019 ne­go­ti­at­ing pe­ri­ods.

Un­der the Gov­ern­ment’s fi­nal pro­pos­al, cash pay­ments would cov­er the 2014–2018 pe­ri­od, while non-cash op­tions would in­clude tu­ition fees, State mort­gage pay­ments and rental oblig­a­tions. The ar­rears would be paid over two to three fi­nan­cial years.

In a tele­phone in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Weath­er­head said the al­lo­ca­tion in the Bud­get did not mean the mon­ey would au­to­mat­i­cal­ly reach pub­lic ser­vants.

He com­pared the sit­u­a­tion with aus­ter­i­ty mea­sures in­tro­duced by the Na­tion­al Al­liance for Re­con­struc­tion (NAR) in 1987, when pub­lic sec­tor wages were cut by ten per cent as part of an aus­ter­i­ty pro­gramme im­posed by the In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund (IMF).

“The Gov­ern­ment can­not dis­burse mon­ey un­less there’s an agree­ment, and al­though they may put it in the Bud­get, many sums go in­to the Bud­get, but they don’t get spent. And un­til the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance re­leas­es mon­ey to a par­tic­u­lar min­istry on a par­tic­u­lar item in the ex­pen­di­ture es­ti­mate, then that mon­ey is just there on the books. It doesn’t go any­where,” he said.

“And if they go ahead and pay it uni­lat­er­al­ly, and you ac­cept that, then if they come and do like the NAR and cut your pay the next time, then you will have to ac­cept that too,” he chuck­led.

Weath­er­head said the im­passe could be re­solved through an agree­ment, in­dus­tri­al ac­tion or a re­fer­ral to the Spe­cial Tri­bunal un­der the Civ­il Ser­vice Act.

Un­der Sec­tion 17 of the Act, the Per­son­nel De­part­ment or the recog­nised union has 21 days from the start of ne­go­ti­a­tions to reach an agree­ment, un­less both par­ties agree to a longer pe­ri­od. If ne­go­ti­a­tions fail, the dis­pute is re­port­ed to the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance.

Sec­tion 20 al­lows a fur­ther 21 days for the min­is­ter to re­fer the dis­pute to the Spe­cial Tri­bunal. If the min­is­ter fails to do so, the PSA has an­oth­er 21 days to make the re­fer­ral it­self.

Re­peat­ed at­tempts to reach Thomas for clar­i­fi­ca­tion on the union’s next steps were un­suc­cess­ful. Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer Dr Daryl Din­di­al de­clined to com­ment.

An­nisette op­ti­mistic

about work­ers’ march

Mean­while, Na­tion­al Trade Union Cen­tre (NATUC) gen­er­al sec­re­tary Michael An­nisette is op­ti­mistic that unions will unite for to­mor­row’s work­ers’ march. He made fi­nal arrange­ments with po­lice yes­ter­day.

Or­gan­is­ers dis­cussed the march with law en­force­ment af­ter writ­ing to the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice. An­nisette said he was op­ti­mistic there would be no ob­jec­tion to the event and ex­pect­ed sol­i­dar­i­ty across the labour move­ment.

He said all unions, in­clud­ing the PSA and the Oil­fields Work­ers’ Trade Union (OW­TU), had been in­vit­ed to par­tic­i­pate.

“We ex­pect and we an­tic­i­pate that all the unions, in the spir­it of ca­ma­raderie, in the spir­it of col­lec­tivism, in the spir­it of what we talk about—built on strug­gle, built on uni­ty—that noth­ing, noth­ing could ever stop any union from join­ing hands in the in­ter­est of the work­ing class, the voice­less, the un­der­priv­i­leged, the dis­ad­van­taged com­mu­ni­ties, pen­sion­ers, those are the peo­ple that we rep­re­sent,” he said.

Port work­ers’ ar­rears dis­pute

An­nisette, who is al­so pres­i­dent gen­er­al of the Sea­men and Wa­ter­front Work­ers’ Trade Union (SWW­TU), said he hoped ne­go­ti­a­tions with the Port Au­thor­i­ty would re­sume.

He re­it­er­at­ed that the union had not agreed to a five-year pay­ment plan for out­stand­ing ar­rears owed to Port-of-Spain port work­ers.

He said work­ers should not have to wait un­til 2031 to re­ceive ar­rears dat­ing back to 2014.

Port work­ers re­ceived 20 per cent of their back­pay on Ju­ly 30, to­talling $32 mil­lion.

An­nisette ar­gued that any fu­ture pay­ment arrange­ment must take in­to ac­count work­ers’ loss of pur­chas­ing pow­er and the po­ten­tial earn­ings they for­feit­ed by not re­ceiv­ing the mon­ey when it was due.

He main­tained that the union had nev­er agreed to the five-year plan, de­spite the im­pres­sion cre­at­ed by a min­is­ter’s state­ment at a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee meet­ing.

An­nisette said he hoped his pub­lic re­sponse would prompt both par­ties to re­turn to the ne­go­ti­at­ing ta­ble.