Wage talks break down; PSA urges members to stay home until next week

Negotiations between the Public Services Association (PSA) and Chief Personnel Officer (CPO) Stephanie Lewis broke down Tuesday as workers converged on Port of Spain and Scarborough, Tobago for a show of support for the PSA negotiating team.

The CPO has offered a one per cent pay increase over the three-year period ending in 2010 along with some improved benefits. The government has stated that it cannot afford more and that the budget deficit would increase to $12 billion if it agrees to the PSA demands.

PSA president Watson Duke informed public sector workers Tuesday that the talks have broken down and said he will not meet with the CPO again unless there is an improved wage offer.

"They again came with nothing new, just the same zero, zero, one per cent," Duke said. "They told us they will buy out the zero, zero per cent and give us $2,000 in back pay that is to be taxed...And they told us they are scraping the barrel to give us this $2,000.”

Duke told workers the CPO told the PSA it would cost $66 million to pay $2,000 to 33,000 public servants, an offer he described as "disrespectful". The PSA has said  it would cost about $1 billion to meet its wage demands.

The PSA chief said the matter must be settled at the negotiating table, not in any court. And he made the point that the fight is no longer about the PSA alone since it involves the entire labour body. Members of more than a dozen other trade unions joined the "Blackout Tuesday: Reloaded" march Tuesday.

Duke also called on workers to take two days off and spend time with their families. “Let Dookeran come out do your work...We don’t care now.”

Friday is a holiday for Divali. So if workers take two days off their next working day would be on Monday. Duke was careful to say that he is not calling for a shutdown. He said it's just an opportunity for people to spend spend time with their families "to rest and prepare for the light after this blackout.”

The PSA is calling for a boycott of businesses until it gets a decent wage offer from the Government for 2011. 

Acting general secretary Nixon Callender told workers, "The PSA and the trade unions say, this Christmas use your last year’s curtains, get your TV repaired, fix your shower heater.

"Until the public sector gets a decent wage offer going into 2011, the business sector will not get our money at all...We will not be supporting big businesses this Christmas."