B.N.T.U. Concedes – Salary Adjustments Deferred to Next April

Luke Palacio

In the opening section of his statement to the nation, Prime Minister Dean Barrow was at pains to point out that none of the eight items discussed on the agenda at the September twenty-second meeting at the Belize Biltmore Plaza Hotel dealt the deferral of the three percent salary adjustment owed to teachers and public officers. A Joint Union Negotiating Team consisting of the Belize National Teachers’ Union; Public Service Union; and Association of Public Service Senior Managers is in charge of those negotiations, and the representatives of the latter two unions have indicated that they support the deferral to next April; the B.N.T.U., adamantly, does not. However, today, B.N.T.U. president Luke Palacio appeared to concede that the deferral will happen. He is now saying that it should not be conflated with the other relevant national issues that the B.N.T.U. is fighting for.

Luke Palacio, National President, B.N.T.U.

“The matter of the three percent…I want to make it again absolutely clear, we did not negotiate the three percent because the negotiation for the three percent salary deferral is for the joint unions. The meeting we had, as it relates to these eight national issues, was a B.N.T.U. meeting with the Prime Minister so there was no place for us to discuss salary adjustments because that is the purview of the joint negotiating teams and we have made our position absolutely clear. The Prime Minister continued and even in his video addressed, he said there is a majority—two to one—the deferral will happen. What else can you do? Let us move on with the national issues. If there is a change of heart, if indeed he decides like he said in his video that he wants us to come back to the negotiating table, let him do it formally. Let him write to us. And we are saying if he writes to us, we are prepared to meet with him, but we will have to review what it is he wants first.”

The deferred adjustment represents an increase of fifteen million dollars to Government’s budget recurrent expenditure in the Ministry of Education, Youth, Sports and Culture.