New Public Sector MOU by April

Government and trade unions representing public sector employees, should by the start of next month, arrive at an agreement for a revised memorandum of understanding (MoU) for the sector.
State Minister for Finance and Planning, Fitz Jackson, who made the disclosure in the House of Representatives on Tuesday (March 7), said that discussions were ongoing on the revised agreement, which would replace the existing MoU, which has been in effect for two years.
The State Minister, who was replying to a question posed by Opposition Spokesman on Finance, Audley Shaw, as to the status of discussions for the revised MoU, explained that the new agreement “will not have a provision for wage freeze as was the case in the existing one.”
“The replacement MoU,” he noted, “will provide for wage increases and it will seek to preserve much of the positive benefits that the unions themselves acknowledge have served to move the relationship between the government as employer on one side and the public sector employees on the other side.”
He emphasised that there was “a commitment on the part of the government, and the unions, to have a conclusion to the replacement MoU by the end of the current financial year, so that a new MoU will be in place for the financial year starting April 1, 2006.”