Unions eager to review salary reform report

A senior union leader says public-sector workers are still waiting to see the full report of the compensation restructuring review so that they can begin to interrogate the findings that are intended to close remuneration discrepancies and bring about equity.

St Patrice Ennis, general secretary of the Union of Technical, Administrative and Supervisory Personnel (UTASP), said while the Government has provided a summary of the compensation review to the unions, he and many of his colleagues will undertake granular analysis when they see the complete study.

The union leader’s comments come against the background of a recent disclosure by Finance and the Public Service Minister Dr Nigel Clarke that the Government was ready to implement the compensation restructuring exercise as soon as it was able to have dialogue with the various bargaining groups and different categories of public-sector workers.

Clarke also signalled that funding for the compensation restructuring exercise in the public sector, which has an effective date of April 1, this year, will be contained in the 2022-2023 Estimates of Expenditure to be tabled in Parliament on Thursday.

While the effective day is April 1, the finance minister pointed out that implementation would take place during the upcoming financial year.

In a Gleaner interview, Ennis stressed that public-sector workers would want to question the findings of the review.

“The majority of the public-sector workers do not know what is in the compensation review,” Ennis said.

With the planned implementation of the findings of the compensation review, Ennis is questioning how this would take place in a context where there are some outstanding collective labour agreements. He said there were unsettled issues spanning more than a year for some bargaining units.

Workers choose

Ennis also dismissed what he claims are concerns by the Government about the number of bargaining units in the public sector.

“When you are talking about there being too many bargaining groups and so on, that is not your remit. That is the workers’ remit. The workers do choose how they want to organise themselves,” he said.

The compensation restructuring exercise is expected to impact the Government’s nine per cent wage-to-gross domestic product (GDP) ratio. As such, it is anticipated that the fiscal responsibility rules will be amended to accommodate the change.

Opposition Leader Mark Golding recently queried whether the compensation restructuring move could be successfully executed within the context of the nine per cent GDP cap that was introduced as part of an International Monetary Fund programme.

Clarke said that the compensation reform would move the wage-to-GDP ratio outside of its current band.

“This restructuring exercise will definitely have us outside of that band,” he conceded.

He said that the Government would have to amend the fiscal responsibility rules to accommodate it.

“There are components of expenditure that contribute to a public officer’s compensation that are for historical and legal reasons not included in that wage and salaries line that we commonly use to establish the wage-to-GDP ratio,” Clarke said while debating the Civil Service Establishment General Order 2021.

“In the restructuring exercise, we aim to tidy all of that up and anything to do with compensation will be in someone’s salary as opposed to being in different places,” he said.

Clarke said that the Government has been providing an overview to the various bargaining groups to ensure that they understand the principles behind the restructuring and what to expect.

“It is a big change, a very ambitious reform, and I hope to have the opportunity to speak to it in greater detail,” he said.

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