It was always likely that one of the important areas of public interest in this year’s budget proposals would be whether or not there would be an announcement regarding salary increases for public servants. Interest in that matter had come to the political front burner last year after the government had given a very modest increase to public servants, but later announced a generous increase in the salaries of its ministers. That set tongues wagging as to which group –ministers or public servants – was more immediately deserving of a salary hike. For a short while public discourse on the issue was energetic though there was never any real controversy beyond a measure of public fretfulness in response to some indelicate remarks made by Minister of State Joseph Harmon on the matter.
All that passed. It appeared that the government had managed to persuade public servants and the nation as a whole that it was committed to paying the long overdue and thoroughly deserving substantial salary hike and it seemed at that juncture that the 2015 budget presentation might be the most fitting forum at which a more magnanimous pay increase for public servants would be announced.
As an aside it has to be said that the political opposition’s response to what has been said in Finance Minister Winston Jordan’s budget presentation on the subject of a meaningful salary increase for public servants amounts to no more than transparent if disingenuous politicking since, over many years, they themselves neglected to set the issue of public servants’ salary increases within the confines of the collective bargaining process. In other words, whether the political opposition now have the moral authority to reprimand the incumbent administration is more than a little questionable.
That having been said, there was clearly a healthy measure of expectation in some quarters and not least among public servants themselves that a salary increase would have been announced in last Friday’s budget. The government, instead, has now opted for going to the negotiating table, that is, restoring wages and salaries negotiations to the collective bargaining framework.
The immediate and understandable reaction to this amongst the public servants with whom this newspaper has spoken is that the government’s position now means that there will be yet another delay, perhaps even a considerable one, before a meaningful salary increase finally materializes. President of the Guyana Public Service Union (GPSU) Patrick Yarde, whilst welcoming the fact that wages and salaries negotiations are finally being restored to the negotiating table, also appeared decidedly unsettled over the fact that there will be yet another delay in the process. He asserts that the whole process could have been dealt with “more efficiently,” pointing out that the negotiating process could have commenced much earlier and might even have, by now, been nearing conclusion. The union President says that proposals for addressing a range of wages and salaries issues, including salary increases, tax review and increments, among others, had been discussed with Minister Jordan during pre-budget bilateral discourses.
If he went to some trouble to assume a measured tone in commenting on the prevailing state of affairs, Yarde alluded to what he described as “foot-dragging,” an assertion that bared a measure of impatience if not irritation. If it does not seem, therefore, as though the GPSU is on the threshold of a face-off with the administration on the wages and salaries hike issue, the leadership certainly appears keen to make the point that what it sees as yet another delay is further testing the patience of public servants. That is not a matter that government can afford to overlook.
For all that, Mr Yarde has told this newspaper that he is not unmindful of the virtue of a return to collective bargaining, a circumstance which, apart from removing the uncertainty that has prevailed for years in important issues like salary hikes and increments, among others, restores an element of civility and mutual respect to the relationship between government and the union and reflects a greater mindfulness on the part of the government of established industrial relations protocols and practices.
What cannot now be ignored is the greater sense of urgency attached to comprehensively addressing ‒ through the collective bargaining process ‒ the matter of public servants’ wages and salaries as part of what is now the far more comprehensive matter of reforming the public service and rendering it better equipped to discharge its obligations to the nation. In that regard we also await the outcomes of the Commission of Enquiry.
