Congress of Trade Unions and Staff Associations of Barbados General Secretary, Dennis Depeiza (left), and President Cedric Murrell as they spoke to the media.
Wage increase on the cards?
“Here I am not speaking in any partisan way about whether that should be restored or not because if they were public workers, we would have been fighting for the restoration of what was given up. We are not involved in that dialogue at all. What we are saying is that if the parliamentarians believe that the country can now relax itself then we are taking that view that we would want that you would treat our representation similarly,” he stressed.
A few moments earlier, General Secretary of CTUSAB, Dennis Depeiza, had outlined that there had been protracted talks on the increasing public sector wages, which have not risen in the last seven years.
In fact, he highlighted that since 2012 there had been only three meetings taking part between the government and unions on the matter – the last occurring in 2014, even though there had been several requests from the bargaining agencies for these to continue.
Murrell therefore said that the umbrella agency would be pushing for a meeting with government at the earliest time to resume wages talks.