JTA President worried about bargaining process in compensation review

La Sonja Harrison, the newly installed President of the Jamaica Teachers’ Association (JTA), is suggesting that educators’ ability to participate in salary negotiations may be compromised if the resolution of certain concerns that Jamaica’s teachers have about the process continues being delayed.

During her inaugural presidential address on Monday night at the JTA’s 58th annual conference, held at the Hilton Rose Hall Resort and Spa in Montego Bay, St James, Harrison said that the unsatisfactory outcome of compensation review meetings to date has raised questions about whether teachers’ bargaining power is being undermined.

“Though invited to two sessions deemed consultations, some of our questions and requests have been denied to date. We are unsure if this is a case of delayed tactics, though it was emphatically stated at the outset that this is not a negotiation. That stance alone is instructive,” said Harrison. “Is this the beginning of the elimination of the bargaining process? There are some freedoms to which we should never attach a price tag, at least not dollars and cents.”

She also argued that teachers have had to subsidise the education system, and insisted that a plan should be created based on an assessment of the money that educators are currently earning.

In February this year, the JTA signed a contract accepting the Government’s four percent wage package. The wages and other allowances in the agreement were for the contract period April 1, 2021 to March 31, 2022.

However, the education sector is currently in a state of uncertainty on whether there will be enough teachers for various courses once the September school term begins, as several teachers are reported to have left Jamaica to seek more lucrative employment overseas.

The Minister of Education has reported that some 167 teachers have resigned since July.

Christopher Thomas – Staff Writer || WESTERN BUREAU

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