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Bermuda Premier offers to take pay cut
Bermuda Premier., Paula Cox
CMC – Premier Paula Cox has offered to take a pay cut in exchange for a new pay deal for civil servants, a union leader has said.
Government has asked workers to take an 8 percent pay cut, as Bermuda battles to get out of a recession which has seen the national debt balloon to more than US$ 1 billion.
But the deal also includes a freeze of public workers’ pension contributions for a year which means they would still take home the same pay.
The Bermuda Industrial Union (BIU) is ready to make a counter-proposal, BIU president Chris Furbert told reporters, but he would not elaborate.
He also said Cox, who is also Finance Minister, had said she was prepared to take a pay cut.
Furbert said: “The Premier said she was prepared to look at a cut in her salary, at that point in time, she couldn’t speak on behalf of her cabinet.”
The deal, which would save government around US$ 31 million and allow workers to keep the same pay, was put to the union by Cox, who earns US$ 224,000 a year, at a meeting on Friday.
The 8 percent normally paid by workers towards their pensions would not be deducted from pay cheques while government would not have to pay its matching share of pension contributions, either.
The 8 percent pay cut would last for a year.
Furbert said: “We are going to go back to them and give them a counter-proposal which I’m not at liberty to discuss at the moment.”
Furbert said government’s proposed deal would apply to all government workers, including those represented by the white-collar Bermuda Public Services Union.
Furbert said his members “seemed pretty much upbeat, they liked the counter-proposal we’re going to take back to the government.”