Petrina Francis, Staff Reporter

OCHO RIOS, St. Ann:

Saying that the government had retreated from an even less-than-adequate pay offer, teachers' union delegates yesterday unanimously rejected the administration's latest proposal and raised the spectre of strikes and other disruptions when the new school year begins in September.

"... Our positions have been hardened," declared Hopeton Henry, the new president of the Jamaica Teachers' Association (JTA), after all 146 delegates at the group's annual conference in this north coast resort town had voted against accepting the Government's pay plan.

Lines drawn

" The lines have been drawn," Henry added. "... I therefore declare that I am ready to lead from the front, not the back, not from the side."

The administration has been told that it has one week to improve its pay offer, while the JTA, at the same time established an "action committee", which will begin to meet next Thursday to plan strategy if the union is not satisfied with the Government's response.

The JTA has given the Government an ultimatum to give the teachers an improved offer, which will expire next Wednesday. Its action committee will meet next Thursday morning to decide on the way forward.

Earlier this year, the JTA, which represents more than 22,000 state-paid teachers, opted out of an agreement between the Government and trade unions to cap the hike in the public sector wage fund at 20 per cent, but allowing increases to individual groups of between 13 per cent and 27 per cent.

Police, doctors and nurses have rejected offers from the Government. It appeared late last week that the JTA had softened and might even recommend an offer that would have given classroom teachers hikes of between 14 and 22 per cent in the first year and between five and eight per cent in the second - but with a proviso. It was to have been bolstered by a one-off $30,000 book grant, an offer which JTA officials claimed that Finance Minister Dr. Omar Davies made verbally during recent negotiations.

However, when Davies' deputy, Fitz Jackson, who has responsibility for public sector salary negotiations sent a formal offer to the JTA on Monday, the book grant component was slashed by three quarters, to $7,500. The Government, Jackson said in his letter, would do a study to determine the real market rate of pay for teachers.

The junior minister, however, warned, that if there was not a settlement at yesterday's meeting, the benefits would be withdrawn.

It was not only the slashing of the book grant that the JTA felt insulted about, for, according to former JTA President Ruel Reid, who led the negotiations, a proposed one-off payment to teachers with graduate degrees was absent from the formal offer sent by Jackson.

"The Government has now retracted on that proposal," he said.

Dr. Davies had not publicly reacted to the claims that he had not kept his word, but Henry, installed Monday night as the JTA's president, said the Government had behaved with insincerity.

"There has been a series of manipulative exercises, our patience has been worn," he said.

The anger was palpable all round.

"This is an insult to the teachers of Jamaica," said delegate Albert Thomas.

Added Paul Adams, a former JTA president: "To be given a false sense of hope is dangerous, wicked and cruel."

"Clean the artillery because I have not been to battle in a long time," he added.