8% pay hike for public servants

-more for sugar workers too

President Bharrat Jagdeo yesterday granted approval for an 8 percent across-the-board increase to be paid to Government employees with effect from 1st January 2011, the Government Information Agency said.

GINA said that the 8 percent increase will be payable to all public servants and members of the disciplined services, while teachers will get a 3 percent across-the-board hike with effect from 1st January 2011 on top of the 5 percent increase previously paid by Government with effect from the same date in accordance with the multi-year agreement concluded between Government and the Guyana Teachers Union.

The President, according to GINA, also granted approval for an additional increase of 3 percent to be paid to employees of the Guyana Sugar Corporation, who were previously paid a 5 percent increase for 2011. It said that the latest decision by the President would bring the total increase paid for 2011 to all these categories of employees to 8 percent.

Bharrat Jagdeo

“The Government of Guyana has consistently paid increases to public sector employees over recent years, at a time when many other countries in the Caribbean and the rest of the world have imposed wage freezes and cuts in their public sector”, GINA said.

Pay increases for public servants have been traditionally announced in December.

On December 3 last year, the government had approved a five per cent across-the-board salary increase for all public servants and members of the disciplined services with effect from January 1, 2010.
The increase also extended to all government pensioners.

On December 12, 2009, government had announced a six per cent across-the-board increase on wages and salaries, retroactive to January 1, 2009.

In 2008, on December 19, government had said it was not in a position to offer public servants “year-end pay-out they are used to receiving”. Earlier that year in the midst of the flour shortage in May, President Jagdeo had announced a 5% salary hike for public servants, a temporary $4,000 non-taxable payment per month for those earning under $50,000 monthly and an initiative to keep bread prices from rising.

Some critics had suggested that the government would announce an early wage hike this year considering that general elections are on November 28.

Critics have also noted that for the last decade or so there has been no negotiated increase in salaries for public servants and the government has simply imposed its own figure. This phenomenon has raised concerns about the effectiveness of the Guyana Public Service Union.

At the GPSU’s biennial delegates’ conference in October this year,  union President Patrick Yarde said the union has had to defend its stance and keep hope alive in a “hostile environment” in which “the minimum wage being offered to public servants is not only unrealistic but a blatant disrespect and insult for their hard work.”

The union leader said that the “hostile environment” is “characterized by vicious and unwarranted onslaughts on workers  and their recognized bargaining unit, disregard for the rule of law and ILO Conventions and pactices and  the absence of due process and gross abuse.”

Yarde said that while he had to condemn this dastardly behaviour in the most vehement terms, he wished to “applaud those members of the government who genuinely felt the need to build rapprochement with the union and to thank them for extending a hand of friendship and support, whenever possible.”

And bemoaning the continuing economic plight of public servants, Yarde noted that in putting the situation  into  stark relief, between 2006 and 2010 the minimum wage increased from $26,070 to $33,207, or 27.4 percent.  He said that during that same period, the accumulated inflation was 32.4 percent, “so we have the ridiculous situation of an insufficient minimum wage being systematically eroded by inflation to such an extent that the worker is substantially worse off in 2010 than in 2006.

“…  the harder the worker works, the less he or she earns in real terms, and the more he or she is forced to borrow or otherwise supplement his or her income (through remittances and/or doing a second and sometimes even a third job) to meet the daily minimum requirements for sustenance and survival,” Yarde contended.