Public servants will undoubtedly welcome the retroactive pay increase announced by President Granger on Wednesday and particularly the lump sum that will be provided just in time for the Christmas season. It is a Christmas present derived from the sum allocated last November in the 2019 budget for public service pay but disconnected from any policy framework or, indeed, free collective bargaining.
The announcements by the President hereunder were quite impressive particularly as it relates to the increase in the minimum wage.
Public servants’ minimum wage will be increased to $70,000 from $64,220 per month. This represents a nine percent increase for 2019 and an overall increase of seventy-seven per cent since the APNU+AFC Coalition Government entered office in 2015 when the minimum wage stood at $39,540; sweeper-cleaners in the Public Education System will now receive the new minimum wage of $70,000.
* Public servants earning between one hundred thousand dollars and under one million dollars will receive an 8.5 per cent increase;
* Public servants earning less than one hundred thousand dollars will also receive a 9 per cent increase in their salaries; and
* Public servants earning a minimum wage of $64,220 will receive, in their December pay cheque $69,336, a sum in excess of their base salaries.
1. Station Allowances will be increased by over 260 per cent from $2,800 to $10,000;
2. Hinterland allowances will be increased by between 100 per cent and 600 per cent from between $4000 and $12,000 to $24,000;
3. Risk allowance will be increased by nine hundred percent from $500 to $5000;
Uniform allowance for health sector workers will be increased from $13,000 and $22,135 to $15,000 and $30,000; and
On-call allowance for doctors will be increased, also.
The raising of the minimum wage to $70,000 per month will bring some measure of justice to several categories of workers including sweeper/cleaners who had lobbied unsuccessfully for years for improved circumstances.
There has been no official word yet from the government on the cost of these measures and whether they fall within the allocation that had been defined in the 2019 budget. This information would also be particularly important given the caretaker status of the APNU+AFC government and the natural inclination to ramp up pay and benefits with the crucial General and Regional Elections just three and a half months away. The stratospheric increases in some allowances point in that direction. Why weren’t these allowances increased incrementally from 2015?
Considering that this was the last such allocation for public servants before the next general elections it was fitting that the President made the announcement as he is the one who is ultimately accountable for the affordability of the package and whether it is aligned with what his government had promised the people.
There are two stark problems here for the President. First, neither he nor his government has lived up to the commitment of free collective bargaining that he faithfully promised on May Day 2015, just two weeks before the general elections which enabled him to enter office. For each of the years: 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018 and now 2019 that he has been President, Mr Granger’s government has made arbitrary awards to public servants whenever it pleased. Aside from the Guyana Teachers’ Union which put up fierce resistance last year, the other unions have merely accepted their fate. The breach by President Granger of his solemn commitment for the restoration of free collective bargaining is serious and has never been convincingly explained by him.
Second, and particularly in light of the pending oil revenues, a public service wages policy as part of a social compact should have been developed by the Granger administration. Nothing has been done on this front as the government has not been willing to engage with the various stakeholders in society as evidenced by the failure to deliver constitutional reform – another major manifesto contravention. Last week the Georgetown Chamber of Commerce and Industry complained that its commentary to the government on the still-to-be-delivered local content policy had not been responded to, the same time type of disinterest that the government has shown to the unions and other social partners.
The President himself had previously signalled keenness on a social compact in his inaugural address to the 11th Parliament on June 10th, 2015 but this has come to naught. In that address, the President said inter alia “We will wage war against poverty under a social compact characterised by an inclusionary process. Such an approach would boost national confidence and allow for the mobilisation of the material and human resources needed for the tasks at hand. We met the leaders of our private sector who will organise a forum that will bring together business, the trade unions, the political parties and civil society. At this forum, we will work to develop a ‘social contract’ that will guide the economy for the next five years until 2020.
“We feel that a vibrant labour movement is essential for social security, a fairer society, effective governance and national development. We aim at resolving social conflict, reducing poverty, improving productivity, strengthening democracy, and enhancing the people’s quality of life”.
The announcement of annual public service hikes has jarred with the freeze in sugar workers’ pay by GuySuCo. While GuySuCo is accountable to its board and has to make hard decisions based on its poor financial performance, the government has shown no willingness to assist even in a one-off payment to sugar workers whose pay has been cut by inflation over the period. GuySuCo’s inability to pay an increase over the last five years is also a searing revelation of the government’s own failure to restore the sugar corporation to financial health. Its recovery plan has not worked.
Sugar remains an important part of the productive sector and a foreign exchange earner and its employees deserve consideration of their living circumstances. One must also not forget the plight of the 7,000 sugar workers laid off by the industry and for whom the government has not been able to come up with viable options.
