by Linda Straker
- Collective annual salary previously set at 9% in Fiscal Responsibility Act
- Amended to 13% GDP when Fiscal Resilience Act came into effect 1 January 2024
- Trade unions engaged in successful collective bargaining negotiations before legislative restrictions
Andre Lewis, Labour Senator in the Upper House of Parliament wants Government to remove the legislative restriction which caps the collective annual salary of public officers to be no more than 13% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
Previously set at 9% in the Fiscal Responsibility Act (FRA), the figure was amended to 13% when the government repealed and replaced the FRA with the Fiscal Resilience Act which came into effect 1 January 2024.
“Labour wishes to place on record again that this is a continued effort of legislative collective bargaining because when you legislate wages, it’s related to GDP; rather than discussing those things around the bargaining table, it creates the potential of industrial unrest,” said Lewis during the 26 April sitting of the Upper House in his contributions to the 2023 annual report of the Fiscal Resilience Oversight Committee (FROC).
The FROC role is to monitor, assess and report on the implementation of the Fiscal Resilience Act and no later than 3 months after the end of each fiscal year, prepare and lay before the House of Representatives for consideration, an annual report on the status of implementation as outlined in the legislation.
“There is no doubt that the Fiscal Resilience Oversight Committee had recommended that this ratio be increased. It is quite possible that this current administration in looking to potentially ease some of these industrial problems that we had plaguing us for about 6 continuous years,” said Lewis as he reminded members that before the legislative restrictions, trade unions representing public officers engaged in successful collective bargaining negotiations.
“We have demonstrated over all these years without these legislative restrictions even when we took no increases for a number of years,” he said, disclosing that some of the people who are currently in senior government positions were one-time members of trade unions engaging in wage negotiations for public officers.
Lewis who is the current president of the Grenada Trades Union Council (GTUC), said that legislative measures for collective bargaining negotiations will continue to act as a potential contributor to industrial problems. “There is no need for these restrictions, as a matter of fact this came in, in what we called then the Structural Adjustment Programme of 2014 to 2016 and the current government side has been accusing the past administration…of maintaining most of the restrictions that came in during the 2014 to 2016 period, but they still exist until today.” He said, “I am placing on record that the current administration can demonstrate that it sees us as a responsible partner and remove those restrictions and that we can continue to negotiate around the table and reach solutions that are in the interest of the workers and the country.”
