THE JAMAICA Teachers Association (JTA) has summoned its Salaries and Conditions of Service Committee for a meeting today to decide, among other things, what steps to take in support of its claims for improved salaries and benefits for teachers.
The JTA has given the Government until tomorrow to come up with a "serious and realistic offer" for the contract period 2002-2004. It rejected a document put forward by the Government, stating that education officials had neither addressed the offer being claimed over the period, nor had given a definitive answer to the majority of other issues cited in the Association's claims. The JTA has, however, refused to give details of the claim on the government.
"The association categorically rejects the document and views it as grossly insulting, contemptuous and extremely provocative," the JTA said in a release.
It said that it hoped that some meaningful effort would be taken to improve conditions in the classrooms to keep teachers in local schools.
"We want improvements in our terms of employment which would include salary plus benefits," JTA Secretary General Dr. Adolph Cameron said yesterday. He said that it would be inappropriate to give figures at this point, but confirmed that the JTA had presented a 29-point claim to the Government.
The JTA said that the document from the Government did not make an offer of a percentage increase in salaries over the 2002-2004 period, nor was it definitive on the majority of items submitted in the claim.
In August, the JTA rejected a proposal from Minister of Education, Youth and Culture, Burchell Whiteman, that it allows the Ministry to carry out a reclassification of teachers to determine a new pay scale.
The Minister suggested this was the best route to a settlement, but the proposal was shot down by hundreds of delegates attending the annual conference of the JTA in Ocho Rios. Last month, Minister of State in the Ministry of Finance and Planning, Michael Peart, told the House of Representatives that he was seeking to have an early settlement of the pay dispute with the teachers.
In a resolution passed at the conference delegates rejected the Government's proposals, demanding that their new pay package be announced by August 27, failing which they would resort to industrial action. In dismissing the Minister's recommendation, the teachers pointed out that they had no intention of following the route of a reclassification, because they had done it already in 1995 and should not be again put in a position to have to fight for justice.
