On the eve of this coun­try’s Bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion for fis­cal 2025, some of the ma­jor unions want to see out­stand­ing ne­go­ti­a­tions set­tled in a way that eas­es the fi­nan­cial strain on mid­dle-and low­er-in­come fam­i­lies.

James Lam­bert pres­i­dent gen­er­al of the Na­tion­al Union of Gov­ern­ment and Fed­er­at­ed Work­ers (NUGFW) told Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian that too many poor peo­ple are suf­fer­ing. As a re­sult, the trade union be­lieves that, out­side of the crime sit­u­a­tion which is be­yond con­trol, the Gov­ern­ment has not been fo­cus­ing on the poor class of peo­ple.

A pas­sion­ate James said the Gov­ern­ment could not be think­ing of the ad­vance­ment of the coun­try, and of­fer­ing work­ers four per cent. He is of the view that the ad­min­is­tra­tion can do much bet­ter than it is present­ly do­ing.

Al­so, the vet­er­an union­ist said he is look­ing for­ward to the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the pen­sion plan for dai­ly rat­ed work­ers, which was signed in 1994.

An­oth­er as­pect Lam­bert touched on is the 65 years com­pul­so­ry re­tire­ment age for dai­ly rat­ed work­ers. Back in 1994, it was agreed on prin­ci­ple to re­duce the manda­to­ry re­tire­ment age from 65 to 60, he said.

On the is­sue of the 4 per cent wage of­fer, NUGFW is one of the unions that has not ac­cept­ed the Gov­ern­ment’s of­fer, and an adamant Lam­bert said he has no in­ten­tions of ac­cept­ing it.

“In 2014, 2015, and 2016, you have not con­sol­i­dat­ed CO­LA (cost of liv­ing al­lowance). Ze­ro, ze­ro per cent you’re of­fer­ing for the two years, the two pe­ri­ods. You have brought it to six years. The of­fer­ing now is 4 per cent for six years, when we pre­vi­ous­ly over the years have been ne­go­ti­at­ing on a three-year ba­sis.

“Those peo­ple who have re­tired with the ex­pec­ta­tion that they would have re­ceived an in­crease, we got ab­solute­ly noth­ing be­cause of the non-con­sol­i­da­tion of CO­LA and the ze­ro, ze­ro per­cent­age in­crease that they have of­fered,” Lam­bert stressed.

Shar­ing his per­spec­tive was Trevor John­son, Joint Trade Union Move­ment (JTUM) as­sis­tant gen­er­al sec­re­tary, who said labour is look­ing at the cre­ation of de­cent per­ma­nent jobs, a halt to re­trench­ment and fur­ther clos­ing down of state en­ter­pris­es.

Look­ing at da­ta from the Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice (CSO/2023) John­son said 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 have 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 af­ford at least some mea­sure of re­lief for work­ers who are at the low­est end of the eco­nom­ic lad­der. The ex­pen­di­ture side for the av­er­age low- and mid­dle-in­come house­holds has in­creased ex­po­nen­tial­ly while the in­come side main­ly from salaries has stalled,” he de­tailed.

John­son not­ed that the much-tout­ed four per cent which was re­ceived by some work­ers in the pub­lic and state sec­tors, 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 2024, pub­lic ser­vants and many state sec­tor work­ers are still on 2019 col­lec­tive agree­ments but guess what the ex­pen­di­ture side con­tin­ues to rise.”

As it per­tains to the prop­er­ty tax, John­son said JTUM has re­ject­ed this move at this time and has called for its de­fer­ral pend­ing ap­pro­pri­ate con­sul­ta­tion and di­a­logue as work­ers and the av­er­age cit­i­zen con­tin­ue to bear the bur­den of eco­nom­ic ad­just­ment, and ris­ing prices across a whole range of goods and ser­vices.

“The prop­er­ty tax rep­re­sents an un­just fi­nan­cial bur­den and im­po­si­tion which the cit­i­zen­ry can­not bear at this time. The ad­min­is­tra­tion of the prop­er­ty tax has al­so proved to be cum­ber­some and bu­reau­crat­ic and has been plagued with mis­steps and un­cer­tain­ty. The cost of at­tempt­ing to col­lect this tax cer­tain­ly seems to out­weigh any gains an­tic­i­pat­ed from the same,” he added.

Al­so speak­ing on the prop­er­ty tax was Steel Work­ers Union pres­i­dent Tim­o­thy Bai­ley, who ques­tioned the tim­ing of its im­ple­men­ta­tion con­sid­er­ing that work­ers have not re­ceived any sub­stan­tial in­creas­es in salaries over the past decade. He de­scribed it as ill-ad­vised and op­pres­sive.

“Deep­er analy­sis of salaries over this pe­ri­od would show that low-and mid­dle-in­come earn­ers have con­sis­tent­ly lost pur­chas­ing pow­er of their salaries, which is ex­pect­ed with the in­creas­es in goods and ser­vices over the last decade.

“The in­tro­duc­tion of prop­er­ty tax is the in­tro­duc­tion of an ad­di­tion­al bill un­der those cir­cum­stances,” Bai­ley em­pha­sised.