Govt Play Cat And Mouse With Public Sector Workers

The Government is being real­ly coy in the way it approach­es these negotiations.
They knew full well that 6% for police would not be well received.
The Government is also aware that what they offered teach­ers would be reject­ed as well .
In essence the govt decid­ed not to nego­ti­ate with itself.
A 7% increase up from 6% makes a mock­ery of the process and the people.
What makes the offers insult­ing is that these work­ers have had their wages frozen in place for years, while infla­tion some months have reached an astound­ing 9.70% >
This means pub­lic sec­tor work­ers are rapid­ly slid­ing below the pover­ty line…

the Government has some seri­ous choic­es to make. In addi­tion to Police who have start­ed sick-out actions, some of the nation’s teach­ers have already start­ed two hour on the job demon­stra­tions. The Nations Doctors on the pub­lic pay­roll have indi­cat­ed that they aren’t feel­ing par­tic­u­lar­ly healthy.
There are over 40.000 pub­lic sec­tor work­ers with whom the Government still needs to meet on salary issues.
The Government has includ­ed some $165 bil­lion in the ²⁰¹⁵⁄₁₆ bud­get for wages and salaries, which is four per cent high­er than last year’s wage bill, accord­ing to the Jamaica Observer report­ing. The prob­lem with that increase is that the last wage bill was not last fis­cal year.
Public sec­tor work­ers who have been on a wage freeze deserve a pay increase, at least to off-set the cost of gal­lop­ing infla­tion. The infla­tion rate fluc­tu­ates from a report­ed 4% on the low end, to a 9.70% depend­ing on the month.

The gov­ern­ment can­not be in the busi­ness of pass­ing IMF tests for the sake of pass­ing tests.
Of course it is impor­tant to meet tar­get­ed goals !
It is dou­bly impor­tant to rec­og­nize that mere­ly meet­ing those goal does not advance the foot-ball down the field , meet­ing them sim­ply keep you on the field.
At some point in time the Government will have to come up with a game-plan that does­n’t just keep the team on the field but one that depicts a path to a poten­tial win.
Meeting IMF tar­gets is good for the Fund, bad for the work­ers and the nation.