CPO signs off on 10 per cent wage increase for NUGFW and $2.6B backpay

Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor–Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­[email protected]

The Na­tion­al Union of Gov­ern­ment and Fed­er­at­ed Work­ers (NUGFW) has signed off on a ten per cent wage in­crease, a deal that will cost the State $2.6 bil­lion in back­pay and add $252 mil­lion an­nu­al­ly to the na­tion­al wage bill.

The agree­ment, which cov­ers two bar­gain­ing pe­ri­ods rang­ing be­tween 2014 and 2019, was signed be­tween Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer (CPO) Dr Daryl Din­di­al and NUGFW pres­i­dent gen­er­al Christo­pher Streete yes­ter­day at the CPO’s of­fice in Port-of-Spain.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia af­ter the agree­ment was signed, the CPO gave a break­down on how the ar­rears would be paid to the 20,000 work­ers who fall un­der the NUGFW.

“What is go­ing to oc­cur is that part of the agree­ment has cash pay­ment for ar­rears and non-cash pay­ment for ar­rears. The cash pay­ment is ap­prox­i­mate­ly 40 per cent of the ar­rears. The val­ue of that is $1 bil­lion TT, the non-cash is $1.56 bil­lion TT. The next step in the process is for us to take a note to Cab­i­net to rat­i­fy the agree­ment.”

Din­di­al added, “We do ex­pect the new salaries to come in June or Ju­ly of this year, and we ex­pect the first tranche of the ar­rears to be paid in this cal­en­dar year.”

The CPO said this cost was not bud­get­ed for in the 2025/2026 fis­cal pack­age and the Fi­nance Min­is­ter will have to find the mon­ey in the mid-year bud­get re­view. The back­pay will be split in­to two tranch­es, one to be paid this year and then an­oth­er at a date to be de­ter­mined.

Ex­plain­ing the non-cash op­tions, the CPO said, “The non-cash item in­cludes is­sues con­cern­ing off­set­ting ar­rears to in­come tax, HDC mort­gage pay­ments, get­ting ve­hi­cle loans ex­emp­tion for tax­es, and so on.”

Re­tirees will al­so ben­e­fit, but their ar­rears will be paid in cash alone.

The CPO said he is now pleased that there are no out­stand­ing col­lec­tive agree­ments for pub­lic ser­vice unions for the pe­ri­od 2014 to 2019.

He said the ten per cent in­crease for the NUGFW is es­sen­tial­ly a 17 per cent ad­di­tion.

“So for both tri­en­ni­ums, CO­LA (Cost of Liv­ing Al­lowance) was con­sol­i­dat­ed on two oc­ca­sions. So when you con­sol­i­date CO­LA in­to salary, the net ef­fect is the salary in­creas­es. So while it’s a ten per cent of­fer, the CO­LA has an ef­fect on that. So in a sense, it’s re­al­ly a 17 per cent in­crease on av­er­age from the ex­ist­ing salary in 2013 to the cur­rent salary that we will have in 2019,” the CPO ex­plained.

Mean­while, the NUGFW leader hailed the sign­ing as a mon­u­men­tous achieve­ment for the union.

“The wait is over. This mile­stone that we have achieved here has been 13 years in the mak­ing. Dai­ly rat­ed work­ers who we rep­re­sent have been pa­tient, they have suf­fered in si­lence, and in­deed we are hap­py that this mo­ment has come where some mea­sure of re­lief could come to them go­ing for­ward.”

Asked ex­act­ly which cat­e­gories of work­ers will ben­e­fit, Streete ex­plained, “So a union has dif­fer­ent bar­gain­ing units, and this bar­gain­ing unit is about 20,000 folks. So every­one, whether they are a mem­ber or not, they will ben­e­fit from this de­ci­sion that we would have made here to­day. So no one will be left out.”

He added, “Whether you would have worked for the 13 years, whether you would have worked for six months, some­thing will be com­ing to you.”

Asked if he was pleased with the terms agreed, Streete said the NUGFW un­der­stands the econ­o­my and it is still bet­ter than the four per cent pre­vi­ous­ly of­fered by the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment ad­min­is­tra­tion.

“When the of­fer of ten per cent was made, we are re­al­ists, you know, and we know in an­oth­er pe­ri­od we wouldn’t have had any non-cash set­tle­ment. Cash is king, ne­go­ti­a­tions and wages are about dol­lars and cents, but we are very re­spon­si­ble and we un­der­stand what is tak­ing place in Trinidad and To­ba­go and the econ­o­my.”

Streete said mem­bers of the NUGFW in­clude skilled labour­ers, trades­men and those he de­scribed as “blue col­lar” work­ers.