BELIZE- PM says unions ultimatum “unfortunate.”

BELMOPAN, Belize, CMC –Prime Minister John Briceño has described as “unfortunate” the public sector trade unions’ request that the government lifts the current freeze on increments to public servants by April this year.

President of the Public Service Union (PSU), Dean Flowers, said that the unions are demanding that their increments be reinstated by April 1 this year.

“I think it is unfortunate when the unions would want to come and say, well, you know, we are going to put it by April 1, as if we don’t want to come to the table. We want to come to the table. We’ve been telling them we are prepared to meet with them and their demands about the increment to unfreeze it,” Briceño said.

In August last year, the Ministry of Finance issued a circular that the government would not be engaged in new hiring, creating posts or filling vacant ones, and approving salary advances and new allowances.

Increments are usually between three to five percent of salaries paid to foreign workers at different times of the year. The issue was among matters discussed in December last year between Prime Minister Briceño and a joint trade union delegation.

Prime Minister Briceño said while his administration is prepared to meet with the unions to discuss the issue, he noted, “the agreement was the salary cut for three years. We only did it for one year.

“We said the increment freeze for three years. We’re prepared to unfreeze after the second year. So it will only be, so we are ready to do that for the third year. But what we’ve been telling the unions is two things.

“In the private sector, you get an increment based on your performance. Many members of the public sector believe that increments should be automatic. If that were so, then that means that we’d have a salary increase every year, then that’s not an increment. That’s a salary increase.

“So we are saying that we are prepared to do that, but we need to put in a better system for these increments to be issued based on merit and performance. And secondly, this is now that we have to talk about pension reform,” Briceño said.

He said the pension reform is a non-contributory pension system or scheme presently unsustainable.

Prime Minister Briceño said that this year, the pension is about BDZ$100 million (One Belize dollar=US$0.49 cents), and all Flowers “needs to do is to look at the budget. The numbers are right there.”

Meanwhile, the joint unions met with government representatives last week to discuss the increment freeze.

Education Minister Francis Fonseca, a part of the government’s negotiating team, said while the government wants to restore the public officers’ increments, the timing of it is the issue.

“Last week, we had an excellent discussion with them, a very productive conversation. There was a general agreement on certain things in that meeting.

“We have a follow-up meeting on March 2. Our team will have to report back to Cabinet at our next meeting, and at that meeting then we will be, based on what Cabinet decides, we will be able to then go back to that, to the unions, to the joint unions next week Thursday,” Fonseca said.

“We are committed to restoring, unfreezing these increments. It’s a question of when we can afford to do it responsibly, so we want to get it done. We understand that the public offices and teachers deserve their increments back. So we want that done, and we’re committed to getting it done during this fiscal year, the upcoming fiscal year.”