News
Jamaica Police begin Industrial Action
In the meantime, the Jamaica Teachers’ Association (JTA), which represents public schools teachers, is expected to meet with Dalley tomorrow, and the Jamaica Confederation of Trade Unions (JCTU), which represents some 40,000 skilled and unskilled public sector workers, is hoping for a meeting on Thursday.
Teachers from some downtown Kingston schools demonstrated for a few hours on Duke Street yesterday, dressed in black, in support of the JTA’s stand.
The JCTU team was expecting that last Thursday’s end of the month meeting of the MOU monitoring committee, which has been in place since the last pay agreement with the government in 2013, would have discussed the five per cent increase.
Eleven major trade unions bargain under the umbrella of the JCTU and, like the other unions, have rejected the Ministry of Finance’s initial offer of 3 percent in the first year and an additional 2 percent in the second year of a new 2 year deal.
The offer seeks to break the ice formed by a 5-year freeze of public sector workers’ salaries, propelled by agreements between successive governments and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). However, the unions says that the offer is too low. -(CMC)
