West In­dies Group of Uni­ver­si­ty Teach­ers (WIGUT) pres­i­dent, Dr In­di­ra Ram­per­sad, says her ex­ec­u­tive will meet with mem­bers on Mon­day to dis­cuss the lat­est wage in­crease pro­pos­al of six per cent for staff of the Uni­verisi­ty of the West In­dies (UWI), St Au­gus­tine.

In a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day, af­ter Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Colm Im­bert an­nounced the high­er wage of­fer, Ram­per­sad ex­plained that it is struc­tured as 0-0-3, 0-0-3 over two bar­gain­ing pe­ri­ods. She em­pha­sised that WIGUT op­er­ates as a de­mo­c­ra­t­ic union, al­ways seek­ing the in­put of its mem­ber­ship be­fore mak­ing sig­nif­i­cant de­ci­sions.

“How we got it is that he sent it to the prin­ci­pal, who for­ward­ed it to us be­cause they ne­go­ti­ate with the prin­ci­pal. The gov­ern­ment does not en­gage the union di­rect­ly,” Ram­per­sad said.

In a me­dia re­lease, Im­bert said the Gov­ern­ment had au­tho­rised the UWI, as the em­ploy­er re­spon­si­ble for ne­go­ti­at­ing col­lec­tive agree­ments with WIGUT, to pro­pose an im­proved wage in­crease for the six years from Au­gust 2014 to Ju­ly 2020. The new of­fer amounts to a six per cent in­crease and will re­sult in an ad­di­tion­al $23 mil­lion per year in re­cur­rent costs for the UWI.

Im­bert added that the to­tal back­pay sum stands at $165 mil­lion, all of which the Gov­ern­ment has agreed to cov­er on UWI’s be­half.

The an­nounce­ment co­in­cides with WIGUT’s on­go­ing White Wash Week—part of a three-week se­ries of protest ac­tions de­mand­ing bet­ter wages. Dur­ing this week of “rest and re­flec­tion” mem­bers were en­cour­aged to dis­en­gage from an­swer­ing desk phones or re­spond­ing to emails.

“At your work­sta­tions, you can pray, med­i­tate, read, re­search, re­lax, keep fit, en­gage in deep thought and stress re­lief, and dream of an of­fer of much bet­ter salaries and im­proved ben­e­fits from your em­ploy­er,” the union ad­vised.

The shift in tone from Im­bert is no­table. Last No­vem­ber he had in­sist­ed that UWI must man­age its ne­go­ti­a­tions in­ter­nal­ly, main­tain­ing that the Gov­ern­ment is not the di­rect em­ploy­er of UWI staff and does not ne­go­ti­ate their terms of em­ploy­ment.

At that time he had warned that meet­ing WIGUT’s de­mand for a 24 per cent in­crease would cost tax­pay­ers $701 mil­lion in back pay. He al­so clar­i­fied that the Gov­ern­ment’s pri­ma­ry re­spon­si­bil­i­ty was to al­lo­cate fund­ing, which in­clud­ed $79 mil­lion in back pay and an ad­di­tion­al $12 mil­lion an­nu­al­ly for re­cur­rent ex­pens­es. He al­so re­vealed that the state’s to­tal an­nu­al fund­ing for the uni­ver­si­ty ex­ceeds $500 mil­lion.

How­ev­er, fol­low­ing mount­ing ten­sions, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley in­ter­vened. At a post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing days lat­er, he di­rect­ed Im­bert to take a more ac­tive role in re­solv­ing the im­passe.