THE Government will work with the Guyana Public Service Union (GPSU) to set mutually agreed deadlines to complete negotiations for salary increases for public servants this year.

This was disclosed by Public Service Minister Dr. Jennifer Webster who said in the National Assembly last week, that the fact that no increases in wages for public servants were announced in the 2014 budget did not mean that there was nothing for workers this year.
She said: “To say that there is no salary increases for public servants is inaccurate and misleading. The fact is that the quantum of monies to be paid to public servants will originate from the collective bargaining process between PSM and GPSU.”
She disclosed that the PSM and the GPSU have recommenced meeting to discuss workers’ issues.
“We, the PSM and the GPSU, are now piloting an arrangement where we restructure our negotiation formations and we will soon introduce a dispensation as to how we deal with salary increases,” she said.
She said that the way the PSM and the GPSU proceed to manage the impending negotiations will be a test case on rebuilding the trust seemingly lost between Government and organised labour.
To this end the Government has every intention to reach agreement with the GPSU on deadlines for the completion of the process of fixing wages and salaries for the nation’s public servants for 2014.

To say that there is no salary increases for public servants is inaccurate and misleading. The fact is that the quantum of monies to be paid to public servants will originate from the collective bargaining process between PSM and GPSU” – Webster

She reiterated that the PSM will continue to work with the trade unions to ensure that staff are accorded maximum available employment benefits and so mprove the welfare of the entire workforce.
Last month, President Donald Ramotar had publicly said that the reason there was no increase in wages and salaries for public servants in the 2014 Budget was because he prefers to have a negotiated agreement between government and the unions this year.
He made the disclosure while speaking to media operatives at Office of the President. He said he wanted a negotiated settlement on wage increases.
“I would like to see them sit down at the negotiating table and come up with an agreement on wages this year.”
He had then asked rhetorically: “What else do you want me to do? Announce for the public servants and then you would come here today to me and say that I am a dictator?”

(By Clifford Stanley)