THE MEMORANDUM of Understanding (MoU) between Government and some members of the Jamaica Confederation of Trade Unions (JCTU) has been signed at a ceremony marked by a flurry of self-congratulatory rhetoric and a general feeling of goodwill by all parties to the negotiations. We are impressed by the new sense of maturity that has emerged in dealing with issues that are politically sensitive and hope that the spirit of the accord, if not the letter, will prevail. The MoU may not turn out to be as historic as it is touted as being, but it is certainly a step in the right direction.
Like all MoUs, the devil is in the details and, given the vagueness and imprecision of many of the terms and conditions, it will be easy for one of the parties to take unilateral action based on what it sees as a breach by the other. The MoU does not call for a specific wage freeze but rather for 'restraint'. The danger is that one man's restraint is another's unreasonable demand. The opposite of restraint is excess and we note with satisfaction the Prime Minister's pledge that Government, like the unions, will eschew any such recklessness, at least over the two-year period of the agreement. In this connection we all note that the salary increases for parliamentarians recommended by the Clarke Committee are to be put on hold.
The unions are claiming that their commitment to restraint was necessary to protect some 15,000 public sector jobs that would otherwise have been lost. We are not sure that this is a sound basis for improving the economy and making it more productive. If the public sector payroll has become bloated to gain political mileage, as appears to have happened in the year preceding the last general election, the more scientific approach may have been to clean out some of the dead wood and offer a little more than a wage freeze to the remaining workers.
It is time the Jamaican workforce gets accustomed to 2 per cent and 3 per cent pay raises as is the norm in Europe and America. This would set a psychological benchmark for future private sector negotiations with the unions and restore a measure of common sense and economic reality to the bargaining process. If the MoU helps to accomplish this, it will have served a useful purpose.
THE OPINIONS ON THIS PAGE, EXCEPT FOR THE ABOVE, DO NOT NECESSARILY REFLECT THE VIEWS OF THE GLEANER.
