General Secretary of the Congress of Trade Unions and Staff Associations of Barbados (CTUSAB) Dennis DePeiza is pleased with Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley’s announcement that negotiations on wages, salaries and allowances would begin before the end of September.
DePeiza told Barbados TODAY that the proposed negotiations had been long overdue.
“It’s been more than five months we have been making requests through the Ministry of the Public Service for a date to specify for the start of the negotiations. We were at a meeting last month assured that they would revert to the principals and have a date for us. So the announcement, we welcome it.
“The congress is well prepared and ready to go to the table. We have done our homework and we are only waiting for the opportunity to be able to get the process started and to see where we can advance the matter of wage and salary increases and of course conditions of service in the interest of the members of the public service,” DePeiza said.
Prime Minister Mottley made the announcement regarding salary talks during a press conference last Friday at Ilaro Court.
Three months after the Mia Amor Mottley led Barbados Labour Party (BLP) administration took office in May 2018, public servants received a five per cent salary increase.
In March this year, CTUSAB and the National Union of Public Workers (NUPW) signalled their intention to pursue public sector salary increases for the first time in three years. Both unions declared that since the last salary increases in 2018, numerous factors including inflation and overall cost of living increases had further eroded the spending power of workers.
NUPW’S General Secretary Richard Greene, had at that time indicated that proposals for salary increases for public workers would be placed on the agenda when the union’s National Council meets.
“This year there is talk about re-grading within the public service looking at salaries and seeing where salaries fit relative to other salaries in the public service and assessing the value of specific posts.
“It involves attaching weight to certain responsibilities and certain specific duties. For instance, one might argue that the value of healthcare is a bit more now. We need to sit down and determine holistically, Greene told Barbados TODAY at that time.
When asked what argument will be placed on the table when the negotiations begin by month-end, DePeiza said that CTUSAB would continue to stay clear of negotiating in public.
“We do not practice engaging in these types of details whether specifics or just alluding to matters in the public domain. But everybody who works, deserves to be given that [salary increase] especially in a climate where we see that persons are having increases in taxes being imposed, high cost of living, these factors where it invariably speaks to the fact that you have to make adjustments,” DePeiza said.
During his contribution to the debate on the Pandemic Levy Contribution Bill 2022 in the House of Assembly in June, Minister in the Ministry of Finance Ryan Straughn confirmed that labour unions had officially requested, in written correspondence, a salary hike for government workers.
Making her contribution to the debate, General Secretary Toni Moore, also the Member of Parliament for St George North made it clear that while some may see workers’ requests for salary increases at this time as unrealistic, employees were seeing private sector businesses getting concessions.
