Why the external labour market survey?

Part 2

UNFORTUNATELY, the government in its arrogant wisdom imposed a four per cent salary increase on teachers for the periods 2014-2017 and 2017-2020, showing complete contempt and disdain for an approach to salary negotiations that had become an established procedure.

The collective bargaining process was not only sidelined, the government completely ignored the fact that the use of an ELMS (external labour market survey) ensures fairness in the process owing to its scientific basis and capacity to be able to withstand scrutiny and accountability.

It can be an objective basis for justification of the compensation package of teaching service members in the context of the wider economy.

It is a process that is globally deployed to determine remuneration packages for professions whose outputs are not easily quantified owing to the level of intangibles, typical of professional occupations.

The use of the ELMS removes allegations of arbitrariness in the demands by trade unions during the collective bargaining process; an allegation that has been used to rebut the bargaining positions of TTUTA prior to 1999.

The deployment of an ELMS places the teaching service in the context of supply and demand for talent and focuses on competition, attraction, retention, demand, industry trends, and supply constraints.

It provides a snapshot of the labour market at a given time and can gauge the correlation between the various sectors of the labour market and the prevailing economy.

Owing to its overarching data-driven basis, it has the capacity to dispassionately determine the economic potential of the society to adequately compensate people who have been deemed to be essential to its functioning.

The ELMS is an extension of the Hay Method of job evaluation that was used to score the respective positions in the teaching service and consequently place its members in a graded structure.

It is a gender-neutral system that focuses on the knowledge and skills required to perform the job, the nature and complexity of the challenges the job provides, the output of the job, its degree of autonomy and freedom to act, as well as the impact of the decisions.

It also takes into account the physical environment, sensory attention, mental stress and physical effort the job demands. These are the factors that make teaching a most unique profession.

The methodology establishes the relativities between jobs and the corresponding grading structure; measuring job size rather than the individual; what is required of the job rather than what an individual might bring to the position.

It emphasises the idea that the ability to discern a difference between jobs is proportionate to the size of the jobs being compared, ensuring that the step difference between jobs must always be the same in percentage terms.

The Hay methodology converts intangibles such as skill, effort, responsibility and working conditions into quantifiables such as knowledge, problem-solving, accountability and working conditions, integrating all of the factors.

Unfortunately, the insistence by the CPO and by extension the government to return to the rejected arbitrary approach to collective bargaining once again threatened to derail the established pay grade structure the Hay methodology established. It is a retrograde step that TTUTA vehemently opposes since it debases and devalues the worth of the teacher in the national context.

This has implications for the profession’s attraction and retention capacity, taking us back to the era of the 90s when teachers were leaving the country by the hundreds like a revolving door.

It is rather unfortunate that the government is willing to accept the recommendations of the Salaries Review Commission which determined that high ranking officials should be adequately compensated for the work they do in the context of the overall economy, but once again indicating its intention to not apply the same principle to other public officers.

The members of the teaching service deserve to be treated in an equitable manner and this can be ensured by completing the ELMS and then using its findings as the basis for the collective bargaining process.

Should the survey reveal a differential between the various positions of the teaching service and the external market, TTUTA has and is always willing to negotiate in good faith the closure of this gap, big or small, as it has done in the past.

The teaching service deserves to be treated with this level of respect and calls on the Chief Personnel Officer to complete the ELMS before any negotiations commence. It will not be bullied into accepting another imposition by the government, holding steadfast to the principles of collective bargaining in good faith.

Read part 1 here