Can’t sacrifice balance on altar of wage demands

JAMAICA confirmed its first case of the novel coronavirus infection on March 10, 2020. Few will deny the Herculean job that our health workers and members of the security forces have done and are doing to protect the well-being of the citizens of this country. My support for these categories of workers has been steadfast.

On April 5, 2020 I wrote, among other things, in my column in the “Our nurses, doctors, radiographers, epidemiologists, social workers, porters, laboratory technicians, ambulance drivers, indeed all categories of health workers who are on the front line working tirelessly to safeguard all of us are heroes. So, too, are the members of the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF), Jamaica Defence Force (JDF), correctional officers, and all other essential staff. Jamaica owes you all a great debt of gratitude for your selflessness. We need to thank them with more than just words, though.”

In my piece on October 11, 2020 I noted: “The Holness Administration has introduced several incentives to lessen ‘burnout’ of health-care professionals. This is good! I believe they need to do more. I think the Administration should deliver a one-off grant (payable in April 2021) equivalent to 25 per cent of one’s gross salary for front-line workers. Money sweetens labour as much as encouragement.”

I continue to believe that these categories of workers deserve unique considerations during this pandemic.

The Agenda Sunday Observer:

Wage talks dilemma

Now that salary and fringe benefits negotiations for public sector workers are once again dominating the news cycle, I think it is as good a time as any for the Government to apportion the country’s very limited resources in an unconventional and more efficient manner.

The Andrew Holness-led Administration has severely limited economic choices before it. The wage bill has not got any smaller. Our debt obligations have to be honoured on a timely basis. And the immediate, medium- and long-term costs associated with the novel coronavirus pandemic are skyrocketing. Will the Administration be able to walk on water or, as we say in local parlance, “mek blood out of stone”? Will the Administration be able to continue to belt out its “no new taxes” ditty, which it has sung at the close of a number of recent budget presentations? Or will it be forced back into a borrowing relationship with the International Monetary Fund (IMF)?

I see some on social media suggesting that Government should halt the infrastructure works on the St Thomas leg of the Southern Coastal Highway Improvement Project (SCHIP), shelve plans for the Montego Bay Perimeter Road, plus other major infrastructure projects, and use those allocations to pay salaries and fringe benefits. That would be the equivalent of cutting off our nose to spite our face. More accurately, such supremely destabilising actions would be tantamount to cutting our own throats.

If Jamaica is to realise her full social, economic, and political potentials we have to move away from stifling redistributive policies which bear little resemblance to our economic reality. Moreover, it is well established that, during periods of great economic dislocation, foundational infrastructural development is a critical ingredient/ approach for fostering, among other things, economic recovery.

Hard times on the land

Three weeks ago Minister of Finance and the Public Service Dr Nigel Clarke told the country that, after careful analysis of the country’s fiscal performance and projections, the Government could only afford to give public sector workers an increase of 2.5 per cent on salaries and salary-related allowances for financial year 2021/2022.

Frankly, there are some among us who don’t give two hoots about the country’s fiscal performance and projections. They only want their ‘pound of flesh’, and they will try and take it by near-any means necessary, even if it means the sinking of an already fragile economy which is fighting the gravitational pull of the catastrophic impact of what virologists and other experts say is the worst pandemic in the last 100 years.

I think the Government must strenuously, but cordially, resist any attempts that would result in the country being put back at the embarrassing juncture in which, a few years ago, we could not stop even a proper stale bread cart because of chronic indebtedness. In those day Jamaica was the laughing stock of the Caribbean. We were legitimately tagged with the ignominious