Thursday, July 5 2012

THE TT Unified Teachers Association (TTUTA) is calling on the Chief Personnel Officer (CPO) to stop stalling and negotiate a prompt, just settlement of teachers’s salaries for the period 2008 to 2012.

Warning that teachers are, “extremely frustrated at the slow pace of negotiations”, TTUTA in a release said, it “will not hesitate to take the necessary action to ensure a prompt, just salary settlement.”

In recent sessions, TTUTA said they have reached agreement in a number of areas including nine principles of the External Labour Market Survey (ELM). The ELM was used over the past three salary negotiations.

They have also agreed to ten benchmark teaching positions, listed over 80 preliminary comparator jobs from 34 selected external organisations used in the ELM survey and agreed on several of the comparator jobs to be used for Grades One to Four teachers.

TTUTA said that negotiations between the CPO and themselves have been taking place almost every Friday since March 2010. Noting that teachers cannot continue to cope with the rising cost of living on 2008 salaries, TTUTA said that poor and non-competitive teacher salaries will lead to teacher shortages and a rapid deterioration in the nation’s schools.

It has been resolute, TTUTA said in the face of delays due to adjustment of policies by the change of Government in 2010, Government’s five percent salary cap, the curtailing of mass action due to the four-month state of emergency in 2011, and “the fruitless foray in respect of the use of a consultant by Government.

Though all this development, TTUTA said, “there is a tendency to seek to reinvent the wheel and stubbornly maintain indefensible, inflexible positions until forced by TTUTA to adopt more reasonable positions.”