Dear Editor,
When one read the words “I dare say” in the last paragraph of the challenge proffered in my colleague Nowrang Persaud’s letter published in Stabroek News of February 27, it was easy to detect that the author had made a soft landing. Indeed it indicated a clear afterthought, failing as it did to establish the comparabilities between GuySuCo, with whom professedly he has been so familiar, in substantive contradistinction to his apparent unfamiliarity with the organisation structure of the public service, and more particularly, with the historicity of structured compensation outcomes generated, as they have been over several decades, by nonetheless credible job evaluation exercises.
Moving from the bottom upwards, an inquisitive reader is bound to ask, for instance: which groups of employees in the public service are comparable to those represented by GAWU and NAACIE respectively, in GuySuCo. Logic would require that the reader be appropriately advised of such comparabilities.
Moving further up, those who, like this writer, would have previously read the text quoted from the CoI Report into the sugar industry, must wonder why it is thought that it, ipso facto, gave the commentary on the Hay Job Evaluation methodology any more sapiential authority than if that evaluation had been presented as a straightforward and more original critique.
The disappointing news in this regard, is that the undersigned has long been a critic of Hay elsewhere and since locally; and there are many in the sugar industry who, at this very moment can attest to my own condemnation of the dilapidation of the compensation structure which the consultants imposed on an innocently complicit management of GuySuCo – not the first.
Notwithstanding, the underperformance of this experience does not totally vitiate the job evaluation approach to establishing compensation structures.
One substantive departure from the particular opening observation concerning its limitations of constructing a job hierarchy and assigning values thereto, is that it is no less scientific than any other component or area of human resources management of which these two debaters can legitimately claim to be experts. My colleague is invited to quote the relevant literature and practical experience in any component of human resources management which is verified as ‘scientific’.
A more dispassionate discussion would have adverted to the respective strengths and weaknesses of the approach, rather than rush to weight an argument in which inheres no obvious conclusion.
This writer has been involved, over the last two decades at least, in the restructuring of a range of institutions – public and private – across the Caribbean, and moreso in Guyana. The restructuring included the establishment of compensation systems based on job evaluation methodologies which have been acknowledged by those institutions as having stood the test of time and re-examinations. They included regional organisations, constitutional entities, budget agencies, statutory bodies, state owned and private sector organisations. The proof of the pudding is in the eating, so to speak.
One of the ingredients in all these exercises was the involvement of employees at all levels in establishing the factors to be utilised as common to the categories of jobs to be evaluated.
So while there was this cautious, if not grudging, reference to different methodologies, a palpable non-sequitur obtains in the absence of any viable options to address the public service dilemma, originally posed by this writer. Such a recommendation would be most welcomed by the CoI into the Public Service.
Incidentally it would be interesting to be advised if routinised wages and salaries negotiations with unions have a scientific base.
Yours faithfully,
E B John
