"Hold strain" - Phillips appeals to public sector workers

Dr. Peter Phillips, Jamaica's Finance Minister, is urging public sector workers to remain calm, following last week's declaration that the Government is unable to give more than a five per cent wage increase for the 2015/2017 contract period.
   
With salary negotiations scheduled to resume this week, Dr. Phillips is again calling for the workers to temper their expectations given the tight fiscal space.
   
In an interview with RJR News on Sunday the Finance Minister appealed for greater understanding by the employees and their unions, stressing that "there are limited resources."

He added that the approach being pursued was based on a set of trade-offs.

"If more money is to be spent that destroys the basic wages-to-GDP ratios that the government has to achieve for purposes of just allowing growth to take place, then we have to find savings elsewhere; its a trade-off," he emphasised.

Teachers at several schools staged protests last Friday, in response to a declaration by Horace Dalley, Minister Without Portfolio in the Ministry of Finance & the Public Service, that the government was not in a position to offer more than a five per cent salary increase this year to public sector workers.

These negotiations come against the background of a three-year wage freeze, which the government negotiated with the workers in 2012.