PM Urges Unions To Work With Government To Resolve Issues

Prime Minister, the Most Hon. Andrew Holness, is imploring unions representing public-sector employees to work with the Government as the Administration moves to restructure the compensation system to make it more equitable.

The Prime Minister noted that while vigorous discussions are anticipated during the reclassification exercise, negotiations can be undertaken amicably.

“There is no need for any type of action that will dislocate the State, dislocate the growth resurgence, the recovery which is under way. It is not logical; it doesn’t make sense for us to kick over our own pail of milk. I urge reason,” he said.

Mr. Holness was speaking at the installation ceremony for the new Custos Rotulorum for St. Andrew, Hon. Ian Forbes, at the Hope Royal Botanical Gardens in St. Andrew on Thursday (May 12).

The Prime Minister said the Government and unions have had a contentious history, but “since then, I believe [we have] matured and I think that we have, with all unions, developed a very good social partnership and a very good mechanism for resolving conflicts”.

Mr. Holness pointed out, for example, that during a similar period of adjustment a decade ago, “when we had to undertake several structural reforms in our financing [and] when we entrenched fiscal discipline”, the exercise was done with the support of the unions as stakeholders and partners.

“We intend to use that similar process of negotiations and to negotiate in good faith,” the Prime Minister assured.

Reiterating the pronouncement by Finance and the Public Service Minister, Dr. the Hon. Nigel Clarke, during the 2022/23 Budget Debate, Mr. Holness reminded that the Government, during the restructuring process, will not undertake adjustments that will make any one group “worse off”.

“The objective is still to ensure that labour… in the public service gets their fair share of the prosperity that the country is and will be experiencing in the future… . This is the Government looking on and acknowledging that these adjustments would be necessary for the efficiency of the operation of the State, because the way it is now it is quite confusing in some instances, unfair in many and absolutely inefficient,” he noted.

He pointed out that there is no secret reserve of resources “that if the planes stopped flying, the tourists stopped coming, our hospitals are shut down and our schools stop teaching, there is somewhere we can just go and take it up and present it”.

“It is your work that keeps the planes coming in; it is your work that keeps the water flowing; it is your work that keeps the students in schools, that grows the economy, that gives the revenues that we are now discussing how those revenues should be shared. I am talking to all Jamaicans – let us just work as one country with one vision, instead of ripping our society apart unnecessarily,” he implored.

The Prime Minister stressed that “this is not an unwilling and uncaring Government. We have gotten this far because we have been a disciplined Government; we have gotten this far because we have managed the finances of the country so well that the average Jamaican does not have to contemplate taxation, where now we are at a point where we can start to address our remuneration and labour issues”.

The public-sector compensation review began in April and is intended to overhaul the structure of salaries and other emoluments in the public service. This exercise will simplify the current complicated 325 salary scales and eliminate most of the 185 allowances.