NUPW: PAY HIKE POSSIBLE

President of the National Union of Public Workers (NUPW), Akanni McDowall, strongly believes that there really cannot be any growth without a salary increase for public servants.

“I think that the two go hand in hand,” he stressed, while observing this year’s Barbados Workers’ Union (BWU) May Day celebrations theme, “A Productive People, A Productive Nation”, yesterday.

“Productivity usually cannot be spoken about in isolation, it has to be spoken within context. And if you are going to talk about increasing the level of productivity within the public service and the private sector, then you must also speak about the fact that public servants have not received a salary increase in almost a decade,” he stated.

McDowall, who continues to push for a 23 per cent pay increase, revealed that while meeting with government officials two weeks ago, NUPW was able to prove that the Government could indeed afford a salary increase.

“It is just up to the Government to show the will to pay public servants a salary increase,” he pointed out.

“We started at 23 per cent and we would have been able to show that the Government can afford 23 per cent. The Government would have started at zero and we tend to meet somewhere in the middle. So, I am hoping that if the Government doesn’t agree on the 23 per cent at least the public servants would receive an increase that is as close as possible to that figure,” he said.

The NUPW president also admitted that it will be a long process, explaining, “We have negotiations, then we have to put it in writing and the Government has to write back and then we have to meet. Therefore, it is a very long process so I would not want to give a time of our next meeting – but it has to be sooner rather than later. Workers are suffering.”

“It is really difficult for people to live during these difficult economic times, especially since they would not have received a salary increase in almost a decade… So people are finding it difficult to go about their day-to-day activities simply because they do not have enough money,” he pointed out. (TL)