Pres­i­dent Gen­er­al of the Na­tion­al Union of Gov­ern­ment and Fed­er­at­ed Work­ers (NUGFW), Christo­pher Streete, says they will meet with Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer (CPO) Dr Daryl Din­di­al on Mon­day morn­ing to be­gin ne­go­ti­a­tions for the pe­ri­ods 2014–2016 and 2017–2019.

“The union would have re­ceived com­mu­ni­ca­tions… that the CPO re­ceived in­struc­tions, or the green light, from the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance to com­mence the ne­go­ti­a­tions,” he said.

Dur­ing a me­dia con­fer­ence at the union’s of­fice on Hen­ry Street yes­ter­day, Streete said it has been more than a decade since work­ers re­ceived any wage ad­just­ments and that they are ex­cit­ed to be­gin talks. How­ev­er, he said the union is en­ter­ing ne­go­ti­a­tions ex­pect­ing a base­line to have al­ready been es­tab­lished and know­ing what to look for in the CPO’s pro­pos­als.

“We will be go­ing in­to this con­ver­sa­tion, these ne­go­ti­a­tions, with a view to com­ing out at the end with a fair deal… and we are ex­pect­ing it not to be pro­tract­ed,” he said.

He thanked the union’s 17,000 mem­bers for their pa­tience af­ter re­ject­ing the four per cent of­fer and said he hopes the process re­sults in a fair and swift set­tle­ment.

“Thank you for not putting any pres­sure… we re­al­ly ap­pre­ci­ate that,” he said.

Streete al­so not­ed that the union will raise ad­di­tion­al is­sues, in­clud­ing con­cerns about im­prop­er­ly grad­ed work­ers such as check­ers and bar­bers, as well as sit­u­a­tions where su­per­vi­sors re­ceive the same pay as work­ers they over­see.

“That is an anom­aly. That is a vex­ing is­sue for the longest while, and we want to en­gage the CPO so that these things could be reme­died,” he ex­plained.

In pre­lim­i­nary talks, Streete said Din­di­al in­di­cat­ed he has no ob­jec­tion to ad­dress­ing these out­stand­ing mat­ters. — Carisa Lee