Editorial | Judges pay hike welcomed

The Government’s broad acceptance of recommendations for big pay hikes to judges will hopefully further bolster the independence of Jamaica’s judiciary as well as spur judges to be more efficient in their jobs.

And even as we appreciate that fashioning a formula by which it would work won’t be easy, this newspaper supports in principle the salary commission’s idea of moving to a “performance-based compensation system for the judiciary”.

Our jury remains out, however, on whether a performance-based compensation system should, as the commission suggests, be “full”, or in part.

In that regard, the administration should immediately set the commission to work to produce the outlines of its proposed arrangement, before a new wage settlement cycle is upon us, in a year’s time.

In the meantime, it isn’t unreasonable to expect judges, in the face of their big salary boost, to produce their written ruling within three to six months of the conclusion of cases – a timeline for which the justice minister, Delroy Chuck, has long been pressing for.

It is also important, though, that any inspiration judges have at this time to work harder and to improve their efficiency, isn’t undermined by a bungled implementation of their new salary scales, as has been the case with teachers and other public sector workers whose salaries have been adjusted under the recent government’s job reclassification exercise.

DON’T HAVE A UNION

Unlike Jamaica Teachers’ Association (JTA), which has publicly, and aggressively, articulated the concerns of its members, judges don’t have a union. But no one knows what happens if demotivated judges are alone in their chambers.

In that respect, we welcome the administration’s establishment of a task force to investigate the teachers’ pay discrepancies. The task force’s mandate should be widened to include an audit of the implementation of the government’s new centralised human resources management information system to determine whether it is on schedule, and how it will help to eliminate the problems of the type that have recently cropped up in the wider public sector, and what are the short-term fixes.

There is little doubt about the competence or integrity of Jamaica’s judiciary. But judges, relative to the work they do and the sensitivity of their office, were, until now, woefully underpaid, creating potential weak points to the independence and integrity of the judiciary – whether for exploitation by the political executive or people who would attempt to induce them into forfeiting their judicial oaths and principles.

As David Batts, a judge in Jamaica’s high court, said in a letter to the press two years ago critiquing the government’s failure to implement an earlier wage hike recommendation: “In a democracy, an independent judiciary is necessary if the rule of law is to be maintained. This is so because when issues arise between the citizen and the State, or between citizens of unequal economic strength, the judges must be able to decide those issues without fear or favour. One important ingredient in that independence is the economic well-being of the judge.”

At that time, the government approved of between 0.4 and 5.7 per cent, which pushed the basic salary of a puisne judge for the 2018 to 2020 period to just J$9 million, and total emoluments to just over J$14 million.

The chief justice’s total package reached J$17.93 million, which was the same as that of the president of the Court of Appeal.

LAGGED BEHIND

In US dollar terms, those salaries lagged significantly behind the justices of five Caribbean territories – The Bahamas, Belize, the Cayman Islands, Trinidad and Tobago, Turks and Caicos Islands – that the compensation commission used as comparators, probably because they, excluding Trinidad and Tobago, are mostly the places that Jamaican judges often find post-retirement employment.

Indeed, the Jamaican chief justice’s basic compensation, before adjustment for taxes, was 56 per cent of the mean average for the group. He was 10 percentage points worse off once taxes were taken into account. Even when all of the chief justice’s allowances were taken into account he was, on average, still 42 per cent adrift of the comparators.

For other categories of judges the differential ranged between 34 per cent and 64 per cent before the effects of taxes were taken into account, and between 51 per cent and 73 per cent after the adjustments for taxes.

This was part of the backdrop against which the commission recommended that the chief justice’s pay move to J$25.35 million for the first year of the current three-year cycle, starting in April 2021, then rise to approximately J$31.2 million in 2022, and to J$34.83 million in 2023. In essence, the recommendation was for the chief justice’s compensation to be increased by 41 per cent in the first year, and those of puisne judges by 31 per cent. There would be small differentials between the adjustments at the top and other categories of judges on the Supreme Appeal Courts.

The administration, however, agreed only to a six per cent across-the-board hike in the first year, but accepted the other recommendations starting in 2022, including a differential between the pay of the chief justice and that of the president of the Court of Appeal and the rolling of previously taxable allowances into basic pay.

The next step for the judges is acceleration on the road to efficiency.