If pub­lic sec­tor wage ne­go­ti­a­tions are even­tu­al­ly set­tled at more than eight per cent, back pay alone could cost the Gov­ern­ment over $5 bil­lion (TT) Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley said in his 2022 Labour Day ad­dress.

Last month, the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer made a two per cent ini­tial of­fer over an eight-year pe­ri­od from 2014-2021. Row­ley said the of­fer has since been in­creased to four per cent over a six-year pe­ri­od 2014-2019, which will cost the Gov­ern­ment $2.5 bil­lion in back pay up to June 2022, and they are com­mit­ted to a fur­ther $500 mil­lion, an­nu­al­ly, just for the civ­il ser­vice, teach­ing ser­vice, de­fence force, pro­tec­tive ser­vices and dai­ly rat­ed work­ers.

“To this must be added the cost of a wage in­crease for statu­to­ry au­thor­i­ties and state en­ter­pris­es, which will in­crease the to­tal cost of a four per cent in­crease by as much as a fur­ther 50 per cent. Should ne­go­ti­a­tions be set­tled at eight per cent, those fig­ures will lit­er­al­ly dou­ble, tak­ing back pay to over $5 bil­lion and the an­nu­al re­cur­rent cost to over $1.5 bil­lion.”

He al­so said he was “puz­zled” by the “strong lan­guage” of the labour move­ment and ac­knowl­edged the labour lead­ers' "dis­sat­is­fac­tion".

“I will ad­mit that the strong lan­guage, which is be­ing re­peat­ed in the pub­lic space, has left me a bit puz­zled, be­cause it does not re­flect, ei­ther nor­mal in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions prac­tice, or the eco­nom­ic re­al­i­ties fac­ing T&T. It is be­ing said that the labour move­ment feels dis­re­spect­ed by the ini­tial of­fer to pub­lic sec­tor trade unions, al­though I, clear­ly in­di­cat­ed that the of­fer was the ini­tial ne­go­ti­at­ing po­si­tion and that ne­go­ti­a­tion would soon be­gin with the var­i­ous bod­ies.”

He al­so re­ferred to the Cen­tral Bank’s state­ments that the cur­rent wind­fall in en­er­gy rev­enues was “tem­po­rary” and should be used in­stead to fund the ad­just­ments in the na­tion­al bud­get, caused by the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

“This could be likened to an un­re­al­is­tic sit­u­a­tion of a per­son who main­tains a com­fort­able, heady lifestyle, and when an un­ex­pect­ed fi­nan­cial ben­e­fit comes, he or she im­me­di­ate­ly splurges it–still con­tin­u­ing to bor­row to pay his/her month­ly rent.”

The PM asked, “Fel­low cit­i­zens, should T&T pur­sue such an ex­am­ple?”

Row­ley said that his Gov­ern­ment con­tin­ues to be fi­nan­cial­ly “pru­dent” and it takes in­to ac­count the dai­ly strug­gles of the or­di­nary work­ers of the coun­try.

“Each mem­ber of my Cab­i­net, I will al­so say, brings to our week­ly meet­ings the re­al-life, dai­ly ex­pe­ri­ences of those they serve, so col­lec­tive­ly we are aware of the dif­fi­cul­ties of the many thou­sands liv­ing on the mar­gin­al line. We are al­so aware of the larg­er, loom­ing chal­lenges fac­ing the labour move­ment.”

He spoke about how the dig­i­tal rev­o­lu­tion is trans­form­ing the world and chang­ing how peo­ple do busi­ness, and warned that those who do not adapt will die.

“On the hori­zon is the larg­er prospect that every job, every busi­ness, every as­pect of 21st-cen­tu­ry life will be re­struc­tured. No job, par­tic­u­lar­ly, the un­skilled, no com­pa­ny, no gov­ern­ment, no econ­o­my will be im­mune to dis­rup­tion in this cen­tu­ry. The re­al­i­ty of the cen­tu­ry is a fast-paced rev­o­lu­tion, which is re-shap­ing every pock­et, every job, every fam­i­ly, every in­fra­struc­ture, all gov­ern­ments, all economies. Larg­er chal­lenges are still ahead, be­cause every or­gan­i­sa­tion, pri­vate or pub­lic, will have to trans­form it­self, from with­in–in mul­ti­ple ways or fade and die.”

Row­ley said the chal­lenge of the labour move­ment is to en­sure that the work­er in this cen­tu­ry un­der­stands the re­al­i­ties, places his or her­self with­in the larg­er pic­ture and recog­nis­es the need to “up-skill” for the new mar­ket–not lose en­er­gy on short-term gains.

He re­mained op­ti­mistic, say­ing that it was not all doom and gloom and that the coun­try has a bright fu­ture once the right de­ci­sions are made.

“Fel­low cit­i­zens, let us not dwell on or be over­come by our bas­ket of pass­ing dif­fi­cul­ties. We are not alone. The whole world is fac­ing this most dif­fi­cult pe­ri­od. Our dif­fi­cul­ty will on­ly over­come us if we fail to see it for what it is and make long-term de­ci­sions on short-term il­log­ic that de­fy our God-giv­en tal­ents.”

He con­clud­ed that the Gov­ern­ment of T&T, in all its poli­cies and so­cial pro­grammes, stands with the labour in rep­re­sent­ing these and all cit­i­zens who ex­pect the best of what the coun­try could af­ford.