JCSA serves ultimatum on Gov’t over outstanding claims

The 30,000-strong Jamaica Civil Service Association (JCSA) has sent an ominous warning to the Government that it cannot guarantee normality in service if the Ministry of Finance and the Public Service does not meet with it by February 25 to settle outstanding claims dating back to 2017.

JSCA President O’Neil Grant told The Gleaner yesterday that members of the association were restive, noting that he cannot allow the union to continue to take the blame for the finance ministry’s lethargy in dealing with lingering claims.

The JCSA boss said the union’s concerns came against the background of the Ministry of Finance and the Public Service’s pronouncements that as part of the upcoming compensation restructuring exercise, allowances would be rolled into salaries.

“If come April, and there is no agreement with the JCSA in relation to allowances outstanding from 2017 and the minister is going to roll them into wages, it is going to cause a serious problem,” Grant said.

“There has been significant deterioration in the value of those rates since they were established in 2017 and to use those rates as the basis of any restructuring of compensation will cause a real decline in the wages of the public sector employees.”

He argued that transportation allowance for public-sector workers was last adjusted in 2019, and since that time, petrol prices have skyrocketed. He said that workers were now struggling with the sum they receive for mileage.

“We are in 2022 now, and from then, gas prices have significantly increased, and now every week, the prices are increasing by $3,” Grant added.

“My members are quarrelling with me now because they are saying if the minister (Dr Nigel Clarke) rolls upkeep allowance into salaries at the rate from 2019, we are going to lose the benefit of the allowance, and so we have to ensure that the roll-in takes place after we would have agreed what the new wage should look like.”

There are allowances that the JCSA and the Government have not agreed on since 2017, said Grant, noting that the union had insisted that correctional officers, like some categories of public-sector workers, should benefit from location incentives.

“They are working next door to people who are getting it and they are not getting it,” he said.

He said that the nurses who work at the Kingston Public Hospital receive location allowances while the correctional officers at the Metcalfe Street Juvenile Correctional Centre receive no such benefit.

“It is unfair and the Ministry of Finance, on a position of equity with that claim, has refused to honour it and we say until we get that, we just can’t move forward,” Grant insisted.

Less than two weeks ago, Clarke told Parliament that the Government was ready to implement the compensation restructuring exercise as soon as it was able to have dialogue with the various bargaining groups and different categories of public-sector workers.

Clarke also signalled that funding for the compensation restructuring exercise in the public sector, which has an effective date of April 1, this year, is covered in the 2022-2023 Estimates of Expenditure.

While the effective day is April 1, the finance minister pointed out that implementation would take place during the upcoming financial year.