JTA to receive advice on court action over salary discontent

A PERCEIVED lack of response from the Government over outstanding salary issues resulting from the public-sector reclassification and compensation exercise will top the agenda at tomorrow’s meeting of the Jamaica Teachers’ Association (JTA), and court action is not off the table.

The meeting, The Gleaner was told, will, among other things, advise the association whether court action is the only option to force response from the Government on several issues arising from the exercise.

The Gleaner was told that the association, at a Special Council meeting of in May, adopted a resolution, which mandated the association to take certain actions arising from the reclassification and compensation exercise.

“We are having general council meeting on Friday. The nature of the discussion or agenda item is not something that I would want to speak publicly about,” JTA president La Sonja Harrison told The Gleaner yesterday.

Continuing, she said: “We had a resolution that was tabled and passed at a Special Council meeting held in May. It was the same resolution that gave rise to the press conference that we held, which gave us instructions to write to the Ministry of Labour, seeking their intervention. It’s the same resolution, and it has a series of actions,” the JTA president said.

Among the matters at the heart of the discontent is the requirement for a graduate degree for some positions that the reclassification did not take into consideration, and on which the finance ministry has not responded to the association.

Harrison said a lack of response on the graduate allowance remains a vexed issue.

“Government seemed to be moving very slowly in addressing issues involving the teachers and given the current climate in which we are operating where teachers are leaving despite the new compensation regime. When addressed, these would see some financial redress for some teachers on the ground,” Harrison explained.

“The meeting was held on May 30, and we have not received a response on policy movement on some of the issues we highlighted, and those have to come in writing” she stated.

The JTA, she said, is trying to pin down a date for a rescheduled meeting for both parties to hear issues regarding taxation that were anomalies.

“That is a meeting that is being rescheduled. We received a response on that aspect. But there are other issues such as the graduate allowance and the remote inducement allowance that would tangibly see improvements in the teachers’ financial situation that we have received no response,” Harrison told The Gleaner.

“The graduate allowance was not factored at all in the transitioning. Had it been considered, it would result in people moving up their particular scale within their band. So they would literally get more pay,” she shared.

Harrison said the issue has to be considered within the context of a number of schools requiring teachers in spite of the reclassification and compensation exercise.

She said many teachers have walked from tenured posts and out of the classroom after being tired of the disrespect to take temporary positions overseas.

“They don’t know if they jumping out in a the frying pan or fire. They just know they don’t want to remain here. They want something to improve their lot. I can’t understand why the Government does not appear to care what the state of education will look like,” she said.

In early May, Education Minister Fayval Williams said that coming out of the meeting with the JTA president, she would spearhead the setting up of a special team dedicated to answering questions regarding information on the pay advice of teachers and related queries.

The Gleaner could not ascertain whether the team has been established.