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EXPENDITURE BUDGET
Wages & Salaries
Mr Speaker, as I look now at the Expenditure budget, let me go back to the
Minister’s proclamation of ‘honouring commitment to the workers who are
under the wage restraint.’ Mr Speaker, that commitment was not worth the
paper on which it was written. The Minister already broke the commitment
with public sector workers by driving them into poverty with the devaluation
of the Jamaican dollar. A leading trade unionist said public sector workers are
the “emerging working poor.” Who are you fooling Minister? How could you
ask for wage restraint and agreed to such an aggressive devaluation? I think
the public sector workers should demand restitution.
So Mr Speaker, as we look at the budget to assess what is in it for public sector
workers, we note that Ms Helen Davis White has put an opening salvo of 15%
wage increase per year for the next two years, for a total of 30% increase. I am
going to ask Ms Davis White to have her analysts look at the Wages & Salary
figures again because even after the PNP administration and the IMF are
agreeing to push back getting to the 9% wage-to-GDP until FY2016/17 instead
of FY2015/16, what is in the budget as a salary increase for this year is at best
5-6%. So yes, Ms Davis White may asking for 15% and expecting 12%. I want
to let you now that you may get 12%... but it will be over two years.
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Interesting observation is that we have not heard a comment from the IMF
on this wage-to-GDP target.
For the record, on the public wage issue, the JLP administration took over a
commitment of billions of dollars signed off by the previous administration
on the recommendation of a sole arbitrator to bring teachers’ pay to
private sector parity plus further arrears that had to be paid later on.
The PNP agreed with police to have a 40 hour work week with a premium
after that. JLP had to implement it. The PNP did not.