Start the negotiations

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Start the negotiations

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Details: Parent Category: Sept 2011; Category: Week ending Sept 30th, 2011; Hits: 472

Editorial

Government has to show a much more bold initiative in meeting with public sector unions and address the issue of salaries for civil servants. It should be noted that THE NEW TODAY is talking about salaries for public officers and not salary increases. The state of the economy is making it almost virtually impossible for any administration in this part of the world with perhaps the exception of Trinidad and Tobago, being in any position to offer any sizeable increase in wages for their employees.

Government is already hard-pressed to find approximately 22-25 million EC dollars each month to pay those workers on its payroll. The clamour being made by the Grenada Union of Teachers (GUT) for the Government Negotiating Team (GNT) to set a date for the start of salary negotiations is with merit and quite in order.

This is no time to play hard ball on a sensitive issue and to send the wrong signals to the teachers and other unions like the Public Workers Union (PWU) and the Grenada Technical and Allied Workers Union (TAWU) that are the other bargaining agents for all state sector workers. The Tillman Thomas-led National Democratic Congress (NDC) government should be strategic in thinking and try and get the talks on salaries for civil servants out of the way because the countdown to the next general elections is virtually upon us as a people.

Why wait for any length of time? Does the government want to go into an elections year faced with an industrial climate that might not be in its favour? Why allow the unions to put a knife at one’s throat in a situation that can be avoided? This government, unlike its predecessor, the New National Party (NNP) of former Prime Minister, Dr. Keith Mitchell, benefitted from massive support of trade union leaders and their members in the past decade.

The unions as part of a coalition of forces were largely responsible for helping to turn the tide of the electorate in favour of Congress in the 2008 poll. Furthermore, the unions were very lenient on the government in its first two years in office and allowed the administration to govern in peace. However, the time has come for the regime to engage in serious negotiations with the unions on the issue of salaries for public officers. A sensible and sensitive government would be more than willing to hurry around the negotiating table.

Given the state of the local economy and global trends, it is only a foolish set of union leaders who would be making excessive demands on the employers of public workers. The news came out only this week that in Spain, a more affluent country than ours, some civil servants have not gotten paid for the last five to six months due to an almost empty Treasury. Even the mighty United States is in a financial bind with businesses not making money as the spending power of workers continues to be under pressure.

However, the recent rise in the minimum wage for house maids and security guards might come into play in the salary negotiations with the public sector unions in Grenada. After all, they would be quite in order to ask for “a little something” for those civil servants at the bottom rug who will surely see themselves as deserving of a reasonable increase in order to help tide them over in the harsh economic climate.

The police officers will also feel that they are entitled to some kind of increase in light of the 100% increase for security guards. After all, the police officers should not be allowed to feel inferior to those employees hired by Security firms? Do we want to send a message to our men and women in uniform that they should consider changing their profession?

A government that preaches transparency and good governance should have no problem in putting the books with the state of the island’s finances at the disposal of the unions to peruse.

The NDC can be trusted with its books. Prime Minister Thomas is not one to “cook the books” or have in place two sets of financial figures – one to hoodwink the IMF, World Bank and Trade unions and the other with the true state of the country’s finances.

That might have been the hallmark of a previous administration in Grenada which had a great dislike for Western financial institutions that were regarded as creatures of imperialism to control the world.

The NEW TODAY is suggesting that the government be more forward looking and change the composition of its Negotiating team to include more high-powered persons in order to arrive at a quick and amicable solution to the issue at hand.

The team should be led by a member of the Cabinet such as Minister of State in the Office of the Prime Minister, Senator Arley Gill and include either the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Finance or the Accountant-General who are familiar with the country’s financial situation.

The much bigger issue, however, is how long can Grenada continue with this high monthly public sector wage bill in a country that is struggling each and every month to make two ends meet?

Each and every government is continuing with the status quo much to the long-term detriment of the country.

This is not a Welfare State and will never be one.