Unions to get 6% salary adjustment

Dean Barrow

While the PM took his initial jab at ROC, he pulled no punches when it comes to the unions who are behind ROC, and claims that the agitation of the Unions at this time is self-serving. A salary increase should kick in on July first and the PM says that while government has committed to a six percent salary adjustment in addition to a three percent annual increment, the unions are not satisfied. That, he says, is what is driving the unions at this point. It is in this backdrop that the unions will meet on Thursday with government officials.

Prime Minister Dean Barrow

“The points that the government has said; it cannot entertain on top of all that it is doing has to do with one; they demand that we look at the income tax structure and change the law. Currently as a consequence of what this government did, nobody who makes under five hundred dollars a week pays income tax. Lot of teachers are public officers are caught. But they want us to raise that so that even more of them will not pay income tax. Well in principle that’s all well and good, but it means a decrease in the very revenue that we have to collect to pay them this huge salary increase. It can’t work. They say aww, but the IMF suggested that there needs to be a review of the taxation structure in this country. Yes the IMF did. I’m not sure that we ought to listen to everything that the IMF said, but in this particular issue, the IMF said that review should mean that you should take down that five hundred dollars…too many people are escaping the tax net when your government has decreed that they pay no tax once they make under five hundred; it should be two-fifty or something like that. So how you will pray inane what the IMF says when the IMF is chastising the government. In fact, they talk about the IMF; I hope when the article four report comes out, they will form a Rod of Correction against the IMF because the IMF is already chastising us for agreeing to any wage increase at all, much less a wage increase off the order of nine percent.”