More than money: as tense wage talks loom, other benefits could be dealmaker
Published:Monday | May 24, 2021 | 12:09 AMRomario Scott/Gleaner Writer -
With rising food prices on one front and shrinking revenues on the other precipitated by the COVID-19 pandemic, one of Jamaica's most senior labour experts is predicting tougher-than-usual wage negotiations ahead for public-sector workers.
Notwithstanding the prediction from the Bank of Jamaica (BOJ) that inflation will be at an average 4.8 per cent over the next two years, Danny Roberts, head of the Hugh Lawson Shearer Trade Union Education Institute, contends that unions will be looking at more direct cost changes that have skyrocketed since the pandemic.
“Negotiations are going to be driven by cost-of-living adjustment, and as much as the [targeted] inflation rate set by the BOJ is between four to six per cent, the workers would be looking at specific items that affect them much more than the overall inflation … like bus fare, transportation, and the food bill,” Roberts told The Gleaner on Sunday.
Chicken and pork producers have warned of impending cost increases for popular proteins, and grain prices on the world market have been rising at an alarming rate.
“We would have seen significant movement in food prices and that would obviously have a more appreciable impact on the wages of the ordinary workers,” Roberts stated.
As the veteran trade unionist examines the predicament facing the Government, he urged that the negotiations be based on empirical data.
“One the face of it, we are going to be entering very tough negotiations,” Roberts said.
President of the Jamaica Confederation of Trade Unions, Helene Davis Whyte, disclosed on Sunday that she was expecting to enter discussions with the Government some time this week over the latest wage offer of a 2.5 per cent increase.
“We didn’t take a take-it-or-leave-it approach, as some others have done. We wrote to the Government and we indicated that we want to have negations. We submitted our claim,” she told The Gleaner, without disclosing the main items on the agenda.
Roberts suggested that more creativity enter the bargaining discussions as the country grapples with the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
“As important as wages are, it is not the only item that is of significant importance to workers,” he said.
Roberts suggested that, as was done before with land offers to workers, consideration be given for workers to access other benefits.
Davis Whyte underscored, too, that those considerations were important.
“For the last several years now, we have adopted the total-package approach. We don’t just look at the wage. We look at the tangibles and intangibles, monetary and non-monetary,” the union head stated.
In emphasising the need to shift the negotiation strategy, Roberts argued that there will be a fallout if the focus is solely on monetary benefits.
“If the approach to the negotiations is simply to try to share up the pie – this shrinking pie – then you are going to get those subtle threats, ‘if we are forced to pay more, then we are going to be forced to lay off workers,’ or workers saying, ‘if we don’t get what we want, we are going to go on strike’,” he warned.