Raphael John-Lall

De­spite an up­com­ing deficit bud­get and the eco­nom­ic chal­lenges that the coun­try faces, in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions con­sul­tant who is al­so a for­mer chief labour re­la­tions of­fi­cer at the Min­istry of Labour Sabi­na Gomez be­lieves that the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) will re­ceive a 10 per cent wage set­tle­ment in the next fis­cal year.

While Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has ad­mit­ted that it will be an­oth­er deficit bud­get in ear­ly Oc­to­ber, she qual­i­fied that state­ment by say­ing that it will be a “very good bud­get” with el­e­ments to gen­er­ate rev­enue.

In an in­ter­view with the Busi­ness Guardian, Gomez who has had decades of ex­pe­ri­ence in in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions and deal­ing with trade unions spoke about pos­si­ble wage in­creas­es and oth­er labour-re­lat­ed top­ics that will arise and should be ad­dressed in the up­com­ing bud­get and in the cur­rent fis­cal year.

“There are the eco­nom­ic re­al­i­ties. This is not a one off pay­ment. It’s a re­cur­ring cost. They have to en­sure that they iden­ti­fy where the mon­ey will be com­ing from. No one wants struc­tur­al ad­just­ment poli­cies be­cause that has se­ri­ous con­se­quence for the pub­lic ser­vice. Yes, I be­lieve the PSA will get its 10 per­cent as promised,” she said.

Two weeks ago, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo an­nounced the Gov­ern­ment’s plan to be­gin the pro­posed pub­lic sec­tor wage ne­go­ti­a­tions at ten per cent in fis­cal 2026.

The Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC), as part of its cam­paign for the 2025 Gen­er­al Elec­tions, promised a base­line 10 per cent salary in­crease for pub­lic ser­vants. This pledge was a key part of their “work­ers’ agen­da” and was sup­port­ed by the PSA and oth­er unions.

The ne­go­ti­at­ing pe­ri­ods are 2014-2016 and 2017-2019 and the PSA Pres­i­dent Fe­l­isha Thomas has said that they re­ject­ed the then of­fers of 4 per cent.

An­oth­er is­sue that Gomez thinks needs to be ad­dressed is up­dat­ing out­dat­ed labour laws.

“I think a crit­i­cal is­sue is the amend­ment of key pieces of leg­is­la­tions that are ar­cha­ic and no longer meet the needs of so­ci­ety. For ex­am­ple, the In­dus­tri­al Re­la­tions Act Chap­ter 88:01, the Truck Act Chap­ter 88:07 (1920) and the Re­trench­ment and Sev­er­ance Ben­e­fit Act Chap­ter 88:13 (1985) all need to be re­vised be­cause em­ploy­ment dy­nam­ics and re­la­tion­ships have evolved. Busi­ness­es are in sur­vival mode and some are pre­pared to forego min­i­mum stan­dards to be prof­itable. A ro­bust in­spec­tion ser­vice is crit­i­cal in the en­force­ment of min­i­mum terms and con­di­tions.”

Gomez said there is an ur­gent need to deal with pro­duc­tiv­i­ty which dri­ves ef­fi­cien­cy in any econ­o­my.

“The is­sue of pro­duc­tiv­i­ty will be at the fore­front with­in the pub­lic sec­tor. How many work­ers work eight hours a day? A work­er com­ing from south and cen­tral Trinidad to Port-of -Spain must leave home by 5:00 am and by 2:00 pm those work­ers are leav­ing the job to beat the traf­fic. So, the traf­fic sit­u­a­tion must be ad­dressed ei­ther through stag­gered work­ing hours or a re­vis­it of the re­mote work pro­pos­al. We have to be in­no­v­a­tive to suc­ceed as a na­tion.”

She al­so ad­vo­cat­ed leg­is­la­tion that would speed up ne­go­ti­a­tions that have left work­ers suf­fer­ing af­ter 10 years of their salaries not be­ing ad­just­ed.

“This must nev­er hap­pen again and the In­dus­tri­al Re­la­tions Act (IRA) needs to be strength­ened to make it an in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions of­fence if par­ties fail to ini­ti­ate pro­ceed­ings by sub­mit­ting pro­pos­als at least six months pri­or to the ex­pi­ra­tion of the ex­ist­ing col­lec­tive agree­ment. The Min­istry of Labour Con­cil­i­a­tion Di­vi­sion can play a vi­tal role in man­ag­ing this process to en­sure an ef­fi­cient and ef­fec­tive process.”

Labour’s wish list

Lec­tur­er of Labour Stud­ies at the Cipri­ani Col­lege of Labour and Co-op­er­a­tive Stud­ies, Trevor John­son who is al­so as­sis­tant gen­er­al sec­re­tary of the Joint Trade Union Move­ment (JTUM) for­ward­ed to the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian a wish list for the bud­get. The list was com­piled from his in­ter­ac­tion with JTUM’s ex­ec­u­tive.

Some of labour’s ex­pec­ta­tions in­clude:

* Com­mence dis­cus­sions im­me­di­ate­ly with the re­spec­tive trade unions with a view to set­tle­ment of all out­stand­ing ne­go­ti­a­tions in the pub­lic and state sec­tor up to 2025;

* Labour leg­is­la­tion: Im­me­di­ate ac­tion on bring­ing key out­dat­ed labour leg­is­la­tion to Par­lia­ment for up­dat­ing as nec­es­sary. Key among these would be the In­dus­tri­al Re­la­tions Act, Re­trench­ment & Sev­er­ance Ben­e­fits Act, Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Safe­ty & Health Act, Ma­ter­ni­ty Pro­tec­tion Act. Al­so, key would be leg­is­la­tion for the pub­lic ser­vice, po­lice ser­vice, pris­ons, fire and es­tate po­lice.

§ Con­tract work: The pro­lif­er­a­tion of con­tract work in the pub­lic ser­vice and state sec­tor must be ad­dressed so that work­ers can have se­cu­ri­ty of tenure and pen­sion­able em­ploy­ment and elim­i­nate un­cer­tain­ties which al­so com­pro­mise pro­duc­tiv­i­ty.

§ Petrotrin re­fin­ery: The Gov­ern­ment must re-open the Petrotrin re­fin­ery with the ap­pro­pri­ate part­ner­ships and lo­gis­tics that this will en­tail.

John­son al­so re­ferred to the ris­ing cost of liv­ing, which he called on the Gov­ern­ment to ad­dress in the up­com­ing bud­get.

“If we con­sid­er some da­ta from the Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice (CSO/2023) it re­veals that there have been in­creas­es across the board in re­al ‘bread and but­ter’ is­sues for the work­ing peo­ple. The cost of ne­ces­si­ties such as food, shel­ter, trans­port, and health has sig­nif­i­cant­ly in­creased while peo­ple face an up­hill strug­gle with an in­crease in food prices of 44.24 per cent, an in­crease in trans­porta­tion of ap­prox­i­mate­ly 43 per cent, shel­ter by 10.21 per cent and a sig­nif­i­cant in­crease in health­care of 38 per cent. The gov­ern­ment needs to ad­dress this and to af­ford at least some mea­sure of re­lief for work­ers who are at the low­est end of the eco­nom­ic lad­der.”

He then re­ferred to some of the pub­lic sec­tor unions who set­tled for the 4 per cent wage in­crease be­fore the last gen­er­al elec­tion say­ing that the weak econ­o­my and in­fla­tion de­voured what lit­tle in­creas­es those work­ers re­ceived.

“Bear in mind that the much-tout­ed 4 per cent and 5 per cent which was re­ceived by some work­ers in the pub­lic and state sec­tor has evap­o­rat­ed even be­fore it reached the house­holds which had to ad­dress out­stand­ing loans, cred­it and util­i­ty bills which piled up from 2014. While we are com­ing to the end of 2025, pub­lic ser­vants and many state sec­tor work­ers are still on 2013 or 2019 col­lec­tive agree­ments, but the ex­pen­di­ture side con­tin­ues to rise.”

Govt must find mon­ey

Na­tion­al Trade Union (NATUC) gen­er­al sec­re­tary Michael An­nisette said de­spite the eco­nom­ic prob­lems, he strong­ly be­lieves that the Gov­ern­ment must be cre­ative in find­ing the re­sources to raise pub­lic sec­tor salaries.

“I have a view that the Gov­ern­ment has the abil­i­ty but the is­sue is how they pri­ori­tise and how it is spent. If they put work­ers first and de­cent wages as a top pri­or­i­ty, we will help the econ­o­my to grow and sat­is­fy a cadre of dis­sat­is­fied work­ers. I think that eco­nom­ics is about peo­ple.”

He crit­i­cised the pre­vi­ous Gov­ern­ment for keep­ing wages low say­ing it hurt work­ers in an econ­o­my full of chal­lenges.

“Labour has been forced to live un­der low wages and those con­di­tions of em­ploy­ment for the last 10 years by the PNM Gov­ern­ment, it was an eco­nom­ic crime and as far as we are con­cerned and we an­tic­i­pate that that mat­ter will be re­dressed. The on­ly unions that took the 4 per cent were teach­ers, po­lice and army and those oth­ers. But in terms of the oth­er en­ti­ties like port work­ers, like PSA, Na­tion­al Union of Gov­ern­ment and Fed­er­at­ed Work­ers (NUGFW) and the dai­ly rat­ed work­ers which is a large chunk of work­ers, they have re­fused to suc­cumb to the pres­sure of ac­cept­ing a 4 per cent in­crease over a six-year pe­ri­od. That has to be ad­dressed. There are peo­ple who have not had in­crease in wages for the last 10 years.”