Students at stake

On Thursday, the Finance Ministry announced it would offer a six per cent increase to UWI lecturers for the six-year period from August 2014-July 2020.

The offer sits between the government’s initial offer of four per cent and the West Indies Group of University Teachers’ (WIGUT) counterproposal of ten per cent.

The increase came after UWI lecturers withheld students’ exam scores, causing ripples of confusion through the institution.

Without their scores, many students are unable to sign up for courses that have prior dependencies, are stalled in applying for GATE funds and without their transcripts, cannot plan a strategy for continuing their education.

The offer from the Finance Ministry came on the eve of “Blackout Week,” this week’s planned intensification of WIGUT’s industrial action.

During last week’s “Whitewash Week,” union members were asked to not answer e-mails and calls to their desk phones as part of a “rest and reflection” strategy.

Blackout Week was supposed to deliver a shutdown of all system operations at the St Augustine campus, a strategy to cripple the university’s capacity to operate this week.

On November 22, WIGUT implemented Blackout Friday, which the union claimed turned the university into a ghost town.

It’s unclear whether the university could effectively limp through a week of the large-scale absence of teaching staff.

UWI principal Prof Rose-Marie Belle Antoine told WIGUT the matter was out of her hands and was the responsibility of the Chief Personnel Officer, but also acknowledged diminished funding was affecting campus sustainability and staffing. UWI cannot find a qualified librarian willing to work for the salary it can offer, and classes are increasingly taught by part-time or less qualified lecturers.

The university’s lecturers aren’t the only teachers having a hard time dealing with the CPO.

TTUTA, after wrangling with the government over an increase for the years 2014-2020, eventually settled on four per cent in May 2023.

The government complained about the cost of that settlement, but TTUTA maintained that it was inadequate.

It’s not surprising then, for TTUTA to be interested in WIGUT’s corkball tactics as negotiations continue for 2020-2023.

But withholding of service, which seems to have worked for WIGUT, won’t scale well for TTUTA.

UWI averages 16,000 students across a range of disciplines and levels of advanced study.

According to 2019 CSO statistics, there are more than 250,000 students enrolled in early childhood, primary and secondary schools, at least a fifth of whom face life-changing SEA, CXC and CSEC exams this year.

Clearly there needs to be a better mechanism for assessing and rewarding teachers. But UWI’s brinksmanship won’t work for TTUTA, though it is clear that teachers – charged with equipping generations of children facing a rapidly evolving future – are not being paid what they deserve.