PSA reports progress in RHA wage talks

Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent, Fe­l­isha Thomas, said a PSA del­e­ga­tion held ne­go­ti­a­tions with the four Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ties on out­stand­ing wage mat­ters.

The del­e­ga­tion in­clud­ed mem­bers of the PSA Ex­ec­u­tive and of­fi­cers rep­re­sent­ing each Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty. Talks were held with man­age­ment teams from the North West, North Cen­tral, South West and East­ern Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ties.

Ac­cord­ing to PSA Pres­i­dent, pro­pos­als were ad­vanced on salaries, cost of liv­ing al­lowances and oth­er al­lowances cov­er­ing the pe­ri­ods 2014–2016 and 2017–2019. The dis­cus­sions formed part of the on­go­ing col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing process be­tween the union and the Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ties.

Thomas said the next stage re­quires each Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty to con­sult its Board of Di­rec­tors. Fol­low­ing those con­sul­ta­tions, the Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ties must act through the Min­istry of Health to ob­tain guide­lines from the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer for ap­proval and sign-off on the ne­go­ti­a­tions for the two pe­ri­ods.

The PSA said it will main­tain com­mu­ni­ca­tion with mem­bers em­ployed with­in the Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ties as the process con­tin­ues. Up­dates will be pro­vid­ed as en­gage­ment with the Boards, the Min­istry of Health and the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer pro­ceeds.

The union said the ne­go­ti­a­tions re­late to terms and con­di­tions af­fect­ing work­ers across the pub­lic health sec­tor and re­main on­go­ing un­til fi­nal ap­proval is grant­ed by the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties.