Govt ratifies 10% pay hike for workers under NUGFW

Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor-Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­[email protected]

Dai­ly-rat­ed work­ers rep­re­sent­ed by the Na­tion­al Union of Gov­ern­ment and Fed­er­at­ed Work­ers (NUGFW) could be­gin re­ceiv­ing their in­creased salaries in Sep­tem­ber, af­ter Cab­i­net rat­i­fied the union’s ten per cent wage agree­ment with the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer (CPO).

CPO Dr Daryl Din­di­al con­firmed the de­vel­op­ment to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, de­scrib­ing Cab­i­net’s ap­proval as the “most im­por­tant” step to­wards im­ple­ment­ing the new rates for ap­prox­i­mate­ly 20,000 work­ers.

“Cab­i­net has rat­i­fied the agree­ment with NUGFW for salaries etc,” Din­di­al said.

Asked how soon the new salaries could be re­flect­ed in work­ers’ pay pack­ets, Din­di­al said Sep­tem­ber was now the more re­al­is­tic time­line be­cause of the re­main­ing ad­min­is­tra­tive work.

Cab­i­net’s rat­i­fi­ca­tion does not mark the end of the process.

Din­di­al ex­plained that the agree­ment must now go to the Min­istry of Labour for a pro­ce­dur­al non-ob­jec­tion, af­ter which the CPO will is­sue in­struc­tions for the new rates to be im­ple­ment­ed.

The de­vel­op­ment rep­re­sents sig­nif­i­cant progress af­ter NUGFW pres­i­dent gen­er­al Christo­pher Streete com­plained ear­li­er this week that “some­body dropped the ball” on im­ple­ment­ing the in­creas­es, which were ini­tial­ly ex­pect­ed to take ef­fect in June or Ju­ly.

Re­act­ing to the Cab­i­net ap­proval yes­ter­day, Streete said he was re­lieved that work­ers were fi­nal­ly mov­ing clos­er to re­ceiv­ing their in­creas­es.

“I’m hap­py for the work­ers. I’m hap­py for the work­ers and the union in terms of this set­tle­ment that we did, this im­ple­men­ta­tion,” Streete told Guardian Me­dia.

“You know, there’s an old adage that says bet­ter late than nev­er. And we can see that it might be late, but it’s hap­pen­ing.”

Streete said the de­vel­op­ment would be par­tic­u­lar­ly sig­nif­i­cant for work­ers who have gone more than a decade with­out an in­crease in their rates of pay.

“I am very grate­ful and I’m most ex­cit­ed for those work­ers who would not have re­ceived any in­crease in the rate of pay that they’re get­ting to­day for the last 12 or 13 years. These mem­bers would be hap­py and their fam­i­lies,” he said.

The NUGFW and CPO signed the agree­ment in April, cov­er­ing two bar­gain­ing pe­ri­ods be­tween 2014 and 2019. While de­scribed as a ten per cent set­tle­ment, the con­sol­i­da­tion of Cost of Liv­ing Al­lowance (CO­LA) over the two pe­ri­ods means work­ers will see an av­er­age in­crease of ap­prox­i­mate­ly 17 per cent over their 2013 salaries.

The agree­ment is ex­pect­ed to cost the State ap­prox­i­mate­ly $2.6 bil­lion in ar­rears while adding an­oth­er $252 mil­lion an­nu­al­ly to the pub­lic sec­tor wage bill. Ap­prox­i­mate­ly 40 per cent of the ar­rears, val­ued at around $1 bil­lion, will be paid in cash, while $1.56 bil­lion will be set­tled through non-cash arrange­ments.

Din­di­al yes­ter­day con­firmed that the 40 per cent cash com­po­nent of the ar­rears will be paid over two fis­cal years.

Streete said work on de­ter­min­ing the back­pay has al­ready start­ed but ex­plained that the ar­rears can­not be fi­nalised un­til work­ers are placed on their new salary rates.

“You can’t cal­cu­late the back­pay un­til the new rates go on,” he said.

“For the back­pay, for the ar­rears to be de­ter­mined, they have to start the new rate. And then we would know, you know, up to when they have to cal­cu­late the ar­rears from.”

Ear­li­er this week, Streete said fund­ing for the new rates had al­ready been al­lo­cat­ed dur­ing the Gov­ern­ment’s June mid-year fis­cal ex­er­cise and main­tained that the de­lay was ad­min­is­tra­tive rather than fi­nan­cial.

The union rep­re­sents dai­ly-rat­ed work­ers across sev­er­al bar­gain­ing units, in­clud­ing skilled labour­ers, trades­men and oth­er blue-col­lar work­ers. The wage set­tle­ment ap­plies to all work­ers with­in the af­fect­ed bar­gain­ing unit, re­gard­less of whether they are union mem­bers.