Industrial Action Looms at PWD

Details

Economy

Tuesday, 26 April 2011 02:30

By Everton Barnes

Antigua St John's - A strike could be in the forecast for the Public Works Department as a longstanding issue surrounding risk pay for some categories of workers remains unresolved.

Antigua Trades and Labour Union (AT&LU) Industrial Officer Ralph Potter said the concern goes back several years, and the affected workers and the union are running out of patience with the repeated delays.

The AT&LU will convene a meeting with affected workers on Tuesday morning to give them an update and decide on a possible course of action.

According to Potter, in 1987, some categories of government workers, including those at the quarries, began receiving what has generally been referred to as "risk pay" because of their tasks. By 2001, negotiations started with the government to have this extended to other workers, including plumbers, carpenters, air conditioning repair men, electricians, and painters.

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A number of factors has resulted in the lack of progress, not least of which has been the rate at which permanent secretaries in the Ministry of Public Works are changed, resulting in the process starting over each time. However, by April 2009, the government had agreed to risk pay for most of the new categories.

But two years later, Potter said the workers have not received the risk pay as promised.

“Two things seem to have been responsible for this; one, the PWD did not inform the Ministry of Finance of the agreement to effect the payments, and two, PWD itself apparently, did not budget for the additional monies under the risk pay agreement,” he explained.

That led to a three-day strike earlier this year. Now, government workshop employees want to receive the same benefits of risk pay.

According to Potter, the PS has informed the union that when the department notifies the Ministry of Finance on the risk pay issue, PWD will not recommend that the workers at the government’s workshop be included. To compound the matter, Potter is also reporting that PWD has said that workers it will recommend for risk pay should be paid 20 percent less than what was agreed to back in 2009.


The AT&LU requested that PWD put its recommendations in writing, and gave it until last Thursday, but that letter has not arrived. Potter said these and other matters will form part of the discussions on Tuesday.

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