THE Guyana Public Service Union (GPSU) notes with mounting concern the perpetuation of a posture of seeming hostility to the very idea of a living wage for Public Servants on the part of Finance Minister Winston Jordan, as reflected in his most recent outburst on the issue of Public Servants’ wages and salaries, published in sections of the media yesterday, Saturday September 17, 2016.The seeming essence of the Finance Minister’s outburst   appears to be with what he says is the “affordability” and “sustainability” of extending the government’s current pay-increase offer despite the fact that the union’s ongoing investigations seriously challenge the validity of the minister’s claims. What Minister Jordan does not say, of course, is that requests made to him by the union for official information that calls into question his “affordability” claim are yet to be provided.

What concerns the union most is the fact that Minister Jordan’s fixation with this questionable “affordability” theory takes no account of the nexus between the realisation of a living wage for Public Servants and the efficiency and effectiveness of the Public Service. Like others before him, the Finance Minister appears to take it for granted that the “sustainability” of the Public Service can somehow be sustained, the meagreness of Public Servants’ emoluments and the direness of their material circumstances notwithstanding. His line of reasoning would appear to be that whatever crumbs are thrown in their direction, Public Servants will simply soldier on, regardless. That, in the union’s view, amounts to taking Public Servants and their families entirely for granted and putting the future of the nation at risk.
It is not the union’s view that the minister’s posture is in line with the professed position of the political administration expressed in its campaign commitment to meaningfully improving the standard of living of Public Servants.
The union also notes with particular concern the clear fixation by Minister Jordan with interventions in the ongoing wages, salaries and allowances negotiations in a manner that is transparently designed to compromise the negotiations and to frustrate the efforts of Public Servants to rise above their present difficult circumstances. Indeed, we are aware that Public Servants across the Public Service, take issue with what has become his counterproductive and, we believe, potentially damaging interventions in the negotiations.

It is a harsh irony that Minister Jordan appears indifferent to the importance of better pay for all categories of Public Servants in circumstances where quite a few contracted employees at the ministry for which he has Cabinet responsibility enjoy ‘super’ salaries. This, incidentally, has been the subject of gossip among some of the meagrely paid substantive Public Servants in that very ministry whenever – as it sometimes does – the issue of wages and salaries arise in office discourse. Contextually, one might ask whether we are in the presence of a minister of government who advocates, indeed, seeks to further institutionalise, a Public Service of ‘haves and have nots?’ The union, of course, wishes to make it clear that it has no objection to a situation in which salary levels are commensurate with qualifications and experience and the required and where scarce skills need to be recruited to fill key and critical public sector positions. That is not to say that all Public Servants ought not to be compensated commensurate with their contributions, skills and qualifications.
It may well be that the minister may regard it as his prerogative to periodically make such reckless and ill-conceived comments about Public Servants’ pay,  though a stage has surely been reached where what he has to say will not only compromise the ongoing negotiations and further frustrate the country’s Public Servants, but may also, in the final analysis, have a deleterious effect on the longer-term effectiveness of the Public Service as a whole and by extension on the development of the country.

It is against this backdrop that the union believes that the Finance Minister should be counselled to desist from pronouncements that do no more than pollute the prevailing environment.
September 17, 2016

Guyana Public Service Union