BRIDGETOWN, Bar­ba­dos–The Na­tion­al Union of Pub­lic Work­ers (NUPW) is keep­ing silent fol­low­ing three hours of talks ear­li­er this week with of­fi­cials from the Min­istry of the Civ­il Ser­vice in the wake of the an­nounce­ment by the Bar­ba­dos gov­ern­ment that it would re­trench at least 3,000 work­ers as it seeks to re­vive an ail­ing econ­o­my.

Last week, the NUPW, which rep­re­sents the ma­jor­i­ty of pub­lic work­ers here, said it had sub­mit­ted six pro­pos­als to the gov­ern­ment in a bid to save the jobs of thou­sands of work­ers who are like­ly to be re­trenched from ear­ly next month.Me­dia re­ports last week, said the pro­pos­als in­clude vol­un­tary re­tire­ment; amend­ments to the Pen­sions Act which would al­low of­fi­cers to re­ceive their pen­sion and gra­tu­ity at age 60; in­cen­tive for ear­ly re­tire­ment at age 55 which would in­clude one year's salary in bonds and re­duc­tion of the work week.

But as he emerged from the closed door meet­ing, NUPW gen­er­al sec­re­tary, De­nis Clarke, would not com­ment on the out­come of the meet­ing.He did in­di­cate that the union was hop­ing for a mir­a­cle in keep­ing with the Christ­mas sea­son.The union is due to hold an­oth­er meet­ing with its mem­ber­ship fol­low­ing the Christ­mas break.The gov­ern­ment said the first 2,000 job cuts would take place by Jan­u­ary 15, fol­lowed by oth­ers by March 1.

Fi­nance and Eco­nom­ic Af­fairs Min­is­ter Chris Sinck­ler said the plan to cut pub­lic ser­vice jobs would re­sult in the gov­ern­ment sav­ing as much as Bds $143 mil­lion and that the gov­ern­ment had al­so agreed to in­sti­tute a "strict pro­gramme of at­tri­tion" across the cen­tral pub­lic ser­vice, fill­ing posts on­ly where it is ab­solute­ly un­avoid­able, over the next five years, end­ing 2018-2019.

"This at­tri­tion is ex­pect­ed to re­duce cen­tral gov­ern­ment em­ploy­ment lev­els from ap­prox­i­mate­ly 16,970 to 14,612 jobs–a pro­ject­ed loss of 2,358 posts; and sav­ings of Bds $121 mil­lion. Over the cur­rent 19-month ad­just­ment pe­ri­od pub­lic sec­tor em­ploy­ment will be re­duced by an ad­di­tion­al 501 jobs with a pro­ject­ed sav­ings of Bds $26 mil­lion," he added.