BACKPAY IN PARTS

Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­[email protected]

Pub­lic Ser­vices’ As­so­ci­a­tion’s (PSA) pres­i­dent Fe­l­isha Thomas has agreed that pub­lic ser­vants will take a part pay­ment of the back­pay Gov­ern­ment will owe them be­fore the end of the year.

The ad­vance on the ar­rears, ex­pect­ed to be dis­bursed on or be­fore De­cem­ber 23, was one of the main fea­tures of the agree­ment Thomas signed off on with Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer Daryl Din­di­al ear­ly yes­ter­day morn­ing, fol­low­ing hours of ne­go­ti­a­tions which start­ed on Mon­day evening.

And while Thomas was yes­ter­day un­will­ing to dis­close the full fig­ure of the ad­vance on back­pay that will be owed to the 25,000 pub­lic ser­vants her union rep­re­sents, she an­tic­i­pates they will be hap­py with the fig­ure pro­vid­ed.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia, Thomas said the ad­vance will con­sist of on­ly part of the ar­rears owed to the pub­lic ser­vants. When asked how much mon­ey this would be, Thomas said she did not want to re­veal the ex­act fig­ure for “safe­ty rea­sons,” but was hap­py the PSA was able to ne­go­ti­ate for part of the sum to be paid out be­fore Christ­mas.

“Just to say it’s a fig­ure that will make the mem­ber­ship hap­py,” Thomas said.

The agree­ment is ex­pect­ed to cost Gov­ern­ment $3.8 bil­lion and $420 mil­lion an­nu­al­ly in re­cur­rent ex­pen­di­ture.

Thomas al­so stressed that the ne­go­ti­a­tions with the CPO have not yet con­clud­ed, as there were still sev­er­al out­stand­ing mat­ters to be dis­cussed at meet­ings card­ed for Jan­u­ary. She said the mat­ters to be dis­cussed in­clud­ed al­lowances and “non-cost” items.

Oth­er trade unions have al­ready ex­pressed hope that Gov­ern­ment will al­so of­fer them 10 per cent wage hikes. (See oth­er sto­ry)

Last week, how­ev­er, Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Pub­lic Util­i­ties and for­mer trade union­ist Clyde El­der said it was un­like­ly the PSA’s suc­cess­ful wage ne­go­ti­a­tions will be re­peat­ed to oth­er unions. He not­ed that unions that ac­cept­ed the pre­vi­ous gov­ern­ment’s of­fer of a four per cent in­crease would find it dif­fi­cult to re­open ne­go­ti­a­tions with the CPO.

“An agree­ment made and signed is what it is. If those unions did not be­lieve that their mem­ber­ship de­served more than four per cent and they signed for four per cent, then you can­not now come and say ‘Well, if the PSA get ten per cent, I want ten per cent too,” El­der said.

Asked about this yes­ter­day, Thomas said she agreed with El­der’s stance on the mat­ter, but de­clined to com­ment fur­ther on re­ports that oth­er trade unions were an­tic­i­pat­ing sim­i­lar en­gage­ment with Gov­ern­ment.

“I wouldn’t make any com­ment on that. I wish the best to all my com­rades and the work­ers they rep­re­sent.”

In March, Thomas ap­peared at a Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress cam­paign meet­ing at North­east­ern Set­tle­ment, San­gre Grande, in the lead-up to the April 28 Gen­er­al Elec­tion. She ac­tive­ly sup­port­ed the par­ty dur­ing its suc­cess­ful elec­tion cam­paign.

Yes­ter­day, how­ev­er, she re­fut­ed claims that her en­dorse­ment of the UNC be­fore they as­sumed of­fice was the rea­son for her union’s suc­cess­ful ne­go­ti­a­tions.

“That’s the take­away peo­ple want to put out there, but what he (El­der) es­sen­tial­ly said is we have fought, we stood against the odds. We stood our ground, re­ject­ed four per cent and to­day, the PSA and our mem­ber­ship are reap­ing the re­wards of that,” Thomas said.

“That is their view and opin­ion, but to­day my mem­bers are hap­py.”

When asked if the wage hike would en­cour­age pub­lic ser­vants to im­prove their pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, Thomas re­ferred to her Labour Day speech, where she ral­lied pub­lic sec­tor work­ers to do their part, but al­so said that crit­i­cal chal­lenges of staffing meant work­ers could on­ly do the best they could with what re­sources were avail­able.

“I al­so made ref­er­ence to the fact that while pub­lic of­fi­cers are blamed for the short­falls with­in the var­i­ous min­istries, what has to be tak­en in­to con­sid­er­a­tion is pro­vi­sion of re­sources,” she said.

“Through­out the pub­lic ser­vice, every min­istry and every unit is un­der­staffed and un­der re­sourced and that’s the re­al­i­ty, so we can’t ig­nore that re­al­i­ty and then place blame on work­ers.

“So, un­til we treat is­sues of short-staffing and the lack or ab­sence of re­sources, we can’t just talk pro­duc­tiv­i­ty be­cause it’s a good top­ic, we have to talk all of the things that are sub­sumed in cre­at­ing a pro­duc­tive en­vi­ron­ment.”

Main fea­tures of the agree­ment signed off on with the CPO by the PSA

• ↓10 per cent wage in­crease

• ↓Con­sol­i­da­tion of Cost-of-Liv­ing Al­lowance (CO­LA) for both pe­ri­ods

• ↓New salaries in the month of Jan­u­ary 2026

• ↓Al­lowances with ef­fect from Jan­u­ary 1, 2014

• ↓Ad­vance on ar­rears on or be­fore the 23rd of De­cem­ber, 2025