UWI workers continue protest over salary dispute; WIGUT seeks Govt response

Senior Reporter

geisha.kowlessar@guardian.co.tt

Protest action will continue at the University of the West Indies (UWI), St Augustine Campus, until salary negotiations are satisfactorily settled.

So said the president of the West Indies Group of University Teachers (WIGUT), Dr Indira Rampersad. She told Guardian Media yesterday that the union is yet to “hear something official from the Government.”

“The Government has to send an official position to the principal who represents the university, who is our employer. We don’t negotiate with the Government. We negotiate with our employer, so the Government has to now send an official communiqué to the principal, which she will relay to us, which we haven’t received,” Rampersad explained.

The union urged the university’s management and Minister of Finance Colm Imbert to finalise negotiations swiftly.

Last Friday, WIGUT intensified its protest as it maintained that its members continued to face challenges by living on 2014 salaries amidst rising inflation and increased living costs.

The UWI workers were offered a two per cent increase from the Government and are currently negotiating for the 2015 to 2017 collective period.

Speaking in Parliament last Friday, Finance Minister Colm Imbert, however, said it was ‘absurd’ to ask the taxpayers of this country to fund the current proposal of WIGUT, which would cost upwards of $700 million in back pay.

“If we were to accept the proposal from WIGUT, the back pay would be $701 million as of March 2024. The cost of the four per cent offer, which we have offered to everybody else and which is being accepted by most trade unions, is estimated at back pay of 79 million and 12 million in additional recurrent expenditure … I am told the WIGUT is asking for the following. With effect from July 2014, eight per cent. With effect from July 2015 another eight per cent and with effect from 2016 another eight per cent, a total of 24 per cent for the period 2014 to 2017,” Imbert said.

However, he was knocked by Rampersad, who said this was not the way to negotiate. “What you heard in the Parliament is not official. That is never the procedure in which we negotiate with the Parliament or over the media. So what you’re hearing in the Parliament must be political football,” she said. Rampersad maintained that protest action would continue until a reasonable offer was given.

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