NATUC: Gov't must address pay for public servants, daily-paid workers

The National Trade Union Centre (NATUC) says it is not buying the excuse that government cannot pay public servants and government daily-rated employees who have not had salary increases for the past six years because the country has no money.

NATUC general secretary Michael Annisette said the rationale is flawed, because if workers are allowed to maintain their purchasing power, this can stimulate the economy.

Annisette said the other narrative, that if government were to acquiesce to the workers' request to pay, some will have to be retrenched, is misleading and calculated to put fear in the hearts of workers.

“The aim of this strategy is to make workers subservient and afraid to demand their just right to be treated equally and respectfully, which is their basic human right,” Annisette said in a statement.

He said the government had failed to address outstanding wages and salaries negotiations for daily- and monthly-paid workers as far back to 2007 and the non-implementation of a Port Authority settlement of 12 per cent for dockworkers for 2014-2017. This failure "cannot stand scrutiny and cannot be justified,” he charged.

“What the government is deviously doing is imposing a forced unilateral wage freeze on all government employees and all statutory bodies and/or entities that falls under the remit of the government. Further, it demonstrates the lack of innovation and creativity that is necessary to keep the economy growing by sustaining job growth and wage growth.”

He said it was not fair to the working class to be forced to live in a society where daily they see the rich getting richer and the income and wealth gap getting wider and wider. Neither was it fair for them to be treated as second-class citizens while the government refuses or fails to address outstanding negotiations and the non- implementation of wage and salary increases.

NATUC, he said, felt government should prioritise how it spends its money, rather than "regulating...workers’ wages and salaries to that of second-class citizens."

Decent wages and salaries increases have proved to be in the best interest of world economies, he said,

“Tto ask workers to continue to worker under 2007 salaries and 2012 and 2013 wages and salaries is damaging the economy more than helping the economy and will create irreparable cracks in the social fabric of our society and all the attendant dangers that may arise from such cracks and negligence.”

NATUC warned any talk of building a new society when human resources and the working class were being ignored was "just talk and political gymnastic and electioneering gimmicks."

The tragedy of TT politics today, said Annisette, is "not the song, but who is singing the song. A new society, in Natuc’s opinion speaks to a new way of doing business when the talents of our citizen will be recognised and rewarded, irrespective of creed, race, political persuasion, religious beliefs or gender. Citizens must be viewed as human beings first and treated as human beings at all times.”