Of pay hikes and protests
There is never an ideal time to release any report from the Salaries Review Commission (SRC), the independent body that reviews salaries and other conditions of service for top public officials.
But the timing couldn’t be worse for the release of the SRC’s 120th report late last week when there were protests by port and postal workers for higher wages and better working conditions.
It sends the wrong message to a population dealing with cost of living challenges. Some public sector employees are clamouring for increases in collective agreements that long past their expiration dates, and recommendations have been made for higher salaries with back pay for the country’s highest office holders.
Damage control, particularly with a general election likely to be called in a matter of months, would require rejection of the SRC recommendations but will not completely dissipate the negativity the report has stirred up.
In any case, it will still not be accepted by the average T&T citizen that the SRC is simply carrying out its constitutional mandate to provide “objective and impartial assessments of salaries and compensation, reducing the risk of political bias or influence.”
They will not understand that prevailing political and social conditions were not considered by the SRC when it recommended significant pay increases for Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley, President Christine Kangaloo, Chief Justice Ivor Archie and Opposition Leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar, among others.
There won’t be much sympathy for the fact that the current salaries of the President, Prime Minister and Opposition Leader are based on recommendations in the SRC’s 98th report, laid more than a decade ago on February 14, 2014.
Therefore, political backlash was inevitable, as Finance Minister Colm Imbert, an experienced parliamentarian, should have understood when he laid the 120th SRC report in the House of Representatives on Friday.
After all, he has witnessed controversies with SRC reports from both sides of the aisles. He was among vocal critics of its 98th report, laid during the People’s Partnership administration when the contentious issue then was the wide disparity in the salaries recommended for ordinary MPs compared to Cabinet ministers and Government MPs.
Recently, he has been the one laying the reports in Parliament, including the 117th report earlier this year, when the SRC proposed a more than 30 per cent hike in the Prime Minister’s monthly salary to $80,000.
Although the SRC’s recent recommendations have not been accepted and there have been no salary increases for Prime Minister Rowley and other high officer holders, the Government will not be spared backlash because of its failure to properly address the numerous industrial relations disputes involving public sector workers.
These include the situation at the Port of Port-of-Spain where workers represented by the Seamen and Waterfront Workers Trade Union (SWWTU) are insisting on a 12 per cent increase they say was agreed to in 2015 during the tenure of the People’s Partnership coalition government. At the same time, postal workers are demanding an 18.6 per cent wage increase they claim was promised in a 2011 job evaluation and T&T Electricity Commission (T&TEC) workers are also protesting.
These are all black marks against the Keith Rowley administration, made worse by the SRC report, that need to be addressed with greater urgency.
Ignoring these issues is not an option.
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