The Constitution of Barbados was amended in 1974 to provide for the establishment of a teaching service commission, among other things. While the other amendments were brought into force, to date, Government has not seen it fit to proclaim the sections that deal with that particular service commission. This is so despite numerous, though intermittent, ill-informed calls to do so over the last 38 years.
The latest person to jump on the teaching service commission bandwagon was the acting president of the Barbados Secondary Teachers Union.
He is reported, in another section of the media, to have said: “The BSTU will be relentless in its endeavour to see the establishment of a teaching service commission.”
His call in itself is neither here nor there; he is merely repeating what others have done for almost four decades without success. But it is particularly worrying that he made his call to the applause of thousands of teachers present who have been misled into believing that a service commission to deal exclusively with the teaching service is a good thing. Their action clearly demonstrates that neither the applauding teachers nor the BSTU has a sufficient understanding of the role of a service commission.
Presently, teachers in Government schools are considered to be public officers and they are in effect employed by the Public Service Commission (PSC). The establishment of a teaching service commission would only change the name of the teachers’ employer. Be that as it may, the acting union president has convinced himself and now others that
“A dedicated agency can assist in removing backlogs, speeding up appointments, and cater more efficiently to employment and labour relations”.
Such naïveté should not fall from the lips of anyone involved in the administration of public service unions. His call is really making a case for an increase in the number of personnel officers at the Personnel Administration Division (PAD) who process matters for presentation to the various commissions. Such an increase would allow some of those officers to deal exclusively with teachers and teaching matters.
The service commissions only deliberate and make decisions on matters that are placed before them by the PAD, of which the Chief Personnel Officer (CPO) is head of department. It is therefore inconceivable that a service commission for teachers would speed up anything, since the CPO would be required to service another commission. Its establishment would not have the desired effect. Rather, it would slow down the process even though it is hard to imagine the PAD working any slower than it is now.
By now most people would have heard of cases where public officers have been suspended on half pay for a number of years awaiting the outcome of disciplinary action that should have been placed before the commission for decisions. This is due in part to the fact that there are not enough personnel officers to drive the process. As a result, they deal with urgent matters while putting back matters that in their judgement can wait.
To illustrate the point, a recent case saw a prison officer returning to work after being suspended on half pay for eleven years. His half pay was restored but more interestingly, since he had not taken vacation during that eleven year period, he is now entitled to approximately 350 days accumulated vacation leave.
Rather than being relentless in its endeavours to see the establishment of a teaching service commission, the BSTU’s time would be better spent if it were lobbying to eliminate or minimize political involvement in the public service processes that are intended by the Constitution and convention to be apolitical.
There is more than enough evidence to suggest that the independence of the service commissions has been compromised, which should be of special interest of all trade unions. Also the union should be relentless in prosecuting grievances of its members who were disadvantaged by the operation of the hastily enacted Public Service Act. Even though Government has promised to fix the problems through amendments to the act, the PAD has been moving to fill posts using the flawed system before those amendments are enacted.
Additionally, they should be relentless in seeking the repeal of the constitutional amendment which gives the Prime Minister a role in selecting permanent secretaries and heads of department. Since the coming into force of the Public Service (Amendment) Act, 2010-1 on February 8, 2010, principals are now considered as heads of Government departments.
As a result, the Prime Minister must now be consulted by the appropriate service commission before any appointments can be made to the posts of principal and deputy principal in accordance with Section 99 of the Constitution. These are matters that should engage the union, not this nonsense of establishing a separate commission.
• Caswell Franklyn is a trade unionist and social commentator.
