BELMOPAN, Belize, CMC – Public sector trade unions have given the Belize government the to lift by April this year the current freeze on increments to public servants.
Increments are usually between three to five percent of salaries and are paid at different times of the year for foreign workers. The issue was discussed in December last year between Prime Minister John Briceno and a joint trade union delegation.
President of the Public Service Union (PSU), Dean Flowers, speaking at a news conference here on Tuesday night, told reporters that the unions had delayed informing the public about the outcome of the deliberations last December to educate their members first.
He said now that has been done. The unions are demanding that their increments be reinstated by April 1 this year.
In August last year, the Ministry of Finance issued a circular stating that the government would not be engaged in new hiring, creating posts or filling vacant ones, and approving salary advances and new allowances.
Prime Minister Briceno had also indicated then that the freeze on increments for public officers and teachers could not be lifted simultaneously with the resumption of their total pay that took effect in July last year.
Flowers told reporters that as it relates to the increments of public sector workers, Prime Minister Briceno had informed the joint unions that not only was he not prepared to restore increments in the upcoming fiscal year but that he was also not prepared to restore public officers on the point where they ought to be when his government decides when to resume the payments of increments.
“Now, you will hear me use the word restore and not resume because the restoration or resumption of increments is not guaranteed in 2024. Our position with the government remains in increments and must be fixed by April 1, 2023.
“There is no reason for the government to continue punishing public officers by withholding their increments. When the Financial Secretary came to us, he was clear that the government would have yielded approximately DZS$17 million (One Belize dollar=US$0.49 cents) in savings,” Flowers said.
He told reporters that that would have resulted in BDZ$51 million in savings for the past three years. “Low and behold, if it is that the government needed to freeze increments, then how in the world can his administration justify that in one year, apart from passing the budget, they went back to the House (Of Assembly) for BDZ$240 million in supplemental.
“That does not show austerity for a government managing the country’s finance prudently,” Flowers said.
The PSU president said that the unions do not support the government’s proposed pension reform.
According to Flowers, the administration’s plan for reform is to establish a contributory pension scheme that will require a contribution from public servants.
Flowers said that the government’s proposed pension agenda had overshadowed their demands for increments to be unfrozen. As a result, the joint union has assumed that no active public servant will pay into any new pension scheme.
“The government will say that the Pension Bill currently stands at BDZ$100 million. This has not been substantiated, neither by an audit, because the Lord knows that every year there are some, a couple hundred, thousands, of dollars missing from the Treasury through fraudulent means by our very own public officers, which means if this is what they are paying out, it could very much include fraudulent transactions.
“In addition, we have to ask why you would join pension reform to increments. It is two different things. Belize needs tax reform as the current tax regime is burdensome on us at 25 percent.”
Flowers said the joint union position is that no public officer currently employed in the Public Service is to continue to any pension fund.
“No public officer currently in the public service is to contribute to any pension fund, no police officer, no coastguard, no teacher, no public officer will contribute to any contributory public funds, and the ministry of finance needs to get that in their head.
“So, whenever it is that they rush the establishment of this pension scheme, which the prime minister informed that he wants to roll out by April 1, 2023, it must be aimed and geared by those who come to the service after that,” he added.
The unions have also raised the issue of the prolonged negotiations over a collective bargaining agreement (CBA) between the Belize National Teachers Union (BNTU) and the government, indicating that 14 years have passed since the signing of the new deal.
BNTU president Elena Smith, who was also present at the news conference, sought to explain why the process had been drawn out.
“We are getting to year 15 and have yet to close our CBA. I believe that is history. I don’t know which other union would have had to wait that long to conclude a collective bargaining agreement. There is one aspect of the CBA that we have yet to be able to finish.
“For us at the BNTU, it is important because it affects our secondary school teachers. I want you to think for a moment. You are working, and at the end of your career, your boss says, you know what? I can only give you 70 percent of what you should be getting,” Smith said, adding that any legal battle to recover the remaining 30 percent would include fees to lawyers as much as 15 percent.
“You own a school, you have employees, and you know what your responsibilities are, and you don’t prepare for 35 years down the road, and then the government will tell us they need money. They can’t afford it. All of us give a collection, and those teachers have to fundraise to be able to assist those schools. So, what are we doing with that money? Have those schools been audited?”
Smith said that teachers were also facing transportation and hardship allowances for teachers.
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