PSA backpay deadlock drags on

AKASH SAMA­ROO

Lead Ed­i­tor - News­gath­er­ing

Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) pres­i­dent Fe­l­isha Thomas says the union is still wait­ing to meet with the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer (CPO) to dis­cuss its counter pro­pos­al on the set­tle­ment of pub­lic of­fi­cers' salary ne­go­ti­a­tion ar­rears, de­scrib­ing the pro­longed de­lay as un­prece­dent­ed and claim­ing it rep­re­sents "the first un­set­tled set­tle­ment in his­to­ry."

In a Face­book post to mem­bers to­day, Thomas said the PSA had for­mal­ly writ­ten to the CPO re­quest­ing a meet­ing.

"The PSA via cor­re­spon­dence to the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer re­quest­ed to meet in fur­ther­ance of fi­nal­iz­ing the set­tle­ment of your ne­go­ti­a­tion ar­rears," Thomas wrote.

Ac­cord­ing to Thomas, the CPO re­spond­ed that he was not yet avail­able.

"The CPO in­di­cat­ed that he was not in a po­si­tion to meet as his of­fice was still con­sid­er­ing the PSA's counter pro­pos­al," she said.

Thomas not­ed that al­most two months have passed since the PSA sub­mit­ted its counter pro­pos­al and eight months have elapsed since the Mem­o­ran­dum of Agree­ment (MOA) was signed.

She added that the con­tin­ued de­lay was un­like any pre­vi­ous wage set­tle­ment.

"This is the first un­set­tled set­tle­ment in his­to­ry," Thomas said.

Com­ments on the Face­book post were re­strict­ed.

This marks an­oth­er chap­ter in the pro­longed ne­go­ti­a­tions over how pub­lic ser­vants will re­ceive ar­rears aris­ing from the wage agree­ment signed be­tween the Gov­ern­ment and the PSA.

The MOA, signed late last year, de­liv­ered a ten per cent salary in­crease for PSA-rep­re­sent­ed work­ers but left out­stand­ing ne­go­ti­a­tions on the struc­ture of the back­pay pack­age.

Gov­ern­ment has main­tained its pro­pos­al that ar­rears should be set­tled us­ing a com­bi­na­tion of cash and non-cash ben­e­fits.

Ear­li­er this year, the CPO said the State re­mained com­mit­ted to a mixed set­tle­ment, com­pris­ing 40 per cent cash and 60 per cent non-cash ben­e­fits.

The PSA sub­se­quent­ly re­ject­ed that pro­pos­al and sub­mit­ted a counter pro­pos­al seek­ing a greater cash com­po­nent.

The union pro­posed that mem­bers re­ceive 60 per cent of their ar­rears in cash and 40 per cent through non-cash ben­e­fits.

As part of those dis­cus­sions, the PSA al­so pro­posed a range of non-cash ben­e­fits, in­clud­ing food cards and fu­el as­sis­tance, ar­gu­ing that such mea­sures would pro­vide mean­ing­ful re­lief to pub­lic of­fi­cers while dis­cus­sions con­tin­ued.