Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor - Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

De­spite the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) claim­ing it re­ceived a “for­mal” ten per cent wage-in­crease “of­fer” from the Of­fice of the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer (CPO) last Fri­day, Guardian Me­dia has been re­li­ably in­formed that no such of­fer was made.

Af­ter a meet­ing be­tween the union and Act­ing CPO Wendy Bar­ton on Fri­day, Thomas tri­umphant­ly de­clared, “I’m hap­py to say to the mem­ber­ship of the PSA this af­ter­noon that an­oth­er promise made is an­oth­er promise de­liv­ered. We have in our hand, de­liv­ered by Act­ing CPO Miss Wendy Bar­ton, an of­fer of 10 per cent, which the PSA will be re­spond­ing to by this evening be­cause, as we have said, our main aim is to en­sure that we close these ne­go­ti­a­tions and put some monies in our mem­bers’ pock­ets by Christ­mas, and that stands.”

Lat­er that day, Thomas, in a video on her Face­book page, took the brown en­ve­lope giv­en to her by Bar­ton and loud­ly tapped it on her desk re­peat­ed­ly, say­ing, “Ten per cent is here,” and adding that a “for­mal of­fer of ten per cent” is in her hands.

How­ev­er, a well-placed source in the CPO’s of­fice said the con­tents of the let­ter in that en­ve­lope do not con­sti­tute an of­fi­cial of­fer but in­stead in­di­cate that a ten per cent of­fer will be made, sub­ject to ne­go­ti­a­tions.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands the let­ter states that it has been agreed the CPO will pro­pose a ten per cent salary in­crease for em­ploy­ees in the Civ­il Ser­vice, the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly, and Statu­to­ry Au­thor­i­ties cov­ered un­der the rel­e­vant Act, for the pe­ri­ods 2014–2016 and 2017–2019. It con­clud­ed by say­ing that the ex­act terms of this pro­posed in­crease still have to be ne­go­ti­at­ed.

How­ev­er, that is said to be dif­fer­ent from an “of­fi­cial of­fer,” which would have in­clud­ed a pro­pos­al on how the ten per cent would be spread out over the ne­go­ti­at­ing pe­ri­ods, a list­ing of al­lowances and changes to rates, in­for­ma­tion on the Cost of Liv­ing Al­lowance (CO­LA), trav­el­ling fa­cil­i­ties, car loans, tax ex­emp­tions, and a salary plan show­ing the new rates—none of which was in­clud­ed in Fri­day’s let­ter.

For­mer PSA Pres­i­dent Clyde Weath­er­head said the usu­al prac­tice dur­ing ne­go­ti­a­tions is that “the union would make a pro­pos­al to the CPO first. Ac­cord­ing to the Civ­il Ser­vice, the as­so­ci­a­tion makes a pro­pos­al to the CPO, or the CPO is di­rect­ed by the (Fi­nance) Min­is­ter and makes a pro­pos­al to the union. So usu­al­ly, whichev­er side pro­pos­es first, they will pro­pose salary in­creas­es, CO­LA, dif­fer­ent al­lowances, trav­el­ling, and oth­er things like that.”

How­ev­er, Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that the CPO’s of­fice has not re­ceived any pro­pos­al from the PSA re­gard­ing the “ten per cent” talks.

Thomas pre­vi­ous­ly said the ten per cent in­crease was in­tend­ed to cov­er both ne­go­ti­a­tion pe­ri­ods: five per cent for 2014–2016, and an­oth­er five per cent for 2017–2019.

Mean­while, Weath­er­head is ques­tion­ing the fea­si­bil­i­ty of Thomas’ pledge to have monies paid by Christ­mas. “Some­times it takes weeks or al­most months to work out how much mon­ey is paid. You have to be sure that peo­ple worked dur­ing the pe­ri­od. So I don’t think it was re­al­is­tic,” he added.

Sev­er­al at­tempts were made via phone calls and text mes­sages to get a re­sponse from Thomas. Labour Min­is­ter Leroy Bap­tiste, who is al­so a for­mer PSA head, has al­so been un­reach­able for some time.

Thomas and the PSA have been in­vit­ed to an­oth­er meet­ing this week to be­gin ne­go­ti­a­tions now that the pre­sen­ta­tion on the state of the econ­o­my was com­plet­ed last Fri­day.