When it comes to announcements about financial and economic matters, I will be the first to admit that I do not normally get too excited. Given the current poor health of the Barbadian economy and the consequent decision by the Government to terminate the services of thousands of public officers starting in January 2014, I somehow developed heightened expectations over the news that the National Union of Public Workers (NUPW) was about to meet with the workers it represents to discuss the planned cuts in the public service and propose remedial measures that the Government can consider to reduce the number of workers to be dismissed.
To get straight to the point, I was left bitterly disappointed with the proposals coming from the NUPW. To begin with, it is shocking that a trade union in Barbados would be so bold as to fly in the face of an amendment made to the country’s Constitution by the last Barbados Labour Party Administration to prevent any Government of Barbados from cutting public servants’ wages and salaries as was done in the early 1990s by the Lloyd Erskine-Sandiford-led Government.
Shouldn’t the NUPW be at the forefront in the fight to protect public sector wages and salaries? Does the NUPW understand that what it is proposing is unconstitutional? If yes to those basic questions, why, then, would the union suggest a three per cent cut in wages and salaries at the bottom of the pay scales in the public service? Simply unbelievable!
Worse yet, acting as if it is totally overcome by the present economic environment, the NUPW is dreadfully proposing additional measures such as a freeze on increments for the next two years, early retirement at age 55, and a shortened work week for some categories of temporary workers as purportedly meaningful solutions to the massive job losses announced by the Government.
Of the NUPW I ask: Where have you been for the past six years?
Don’t you understand and appreciate the magnitude of the economic problems confronting Barbados? How much of an impact do you expect your proposed remedies can have on the Government’s fiscal situation? I say to you, respectfully, your recommended policies amount to gasping for breath in an economic environment that has been allowed to deteriorate to the present point of extreme anxiety by the Government with your blessings.
Therefore, what you have to do in the interest of your workers is to first send a strong message to the Government that it has contradicted itself when it promised time and time again that “there will be no layoffs in the public sector” and must now pay the ultimate price for such a dramatic deception of the public sector workers you are supposed to be representing.
Secondly, as a responsible representative of the vast majority of public servants, you must take counsel from the words of Sir Dwight Venner and say to the Government that: “Small states have an obligation in the current environment to line up in the fight against global crises which have been described as ‘loud’ in the case of financial crises and ‘silent’ in the case of poverty…The policy options which we face are reasonably clear but understandably not easy to implement. There is a need to broker a compromise between the urgency for reform and the speed with which it can be implemented in the current political and social environment.”
If you want to be the true champion of the workers in the public service for whom you are charged with the important responsibility of adequately representing, then, it should be easy to accept and implement my recommendations to you. Are you so inclined?
Email [email protected]
