Clive Dobson, president emeritus at the National Workers Union (NWU), shows a letter sent by Trevor Hamilton and Associates, the company JPS hired to conduct an employee evaluation and reclassification, to the JPS yesterday during a press conference at the NWU headquarters in Kingston. Beside him is Wesley Nelson, senior vice president of the Bustamante Industrial Trade Union. (Photo: Joseph Wellington)

A disruption in the island's power supply is likely if tomorrow's meeting between the four unions representing 1,700 Jamaica Public Service Company (JPS) workers and the company's CEO ends in deadlock, according to Clive Dobson, president emeritus at the National Workers Union (NWU).

Dobson told journalists at a news conference yesterday that the employees have ran out of patience waiting on an evaluation and reclassification process that has been ongoing for seven years. Some $2 billion is said to be owed to the workers.

He said the main objective of tomorrow's meeting will be to request that Alicia Lyle, director of human resource services at the light and power company, be removed from the process, because of what the workers claim is a reluctance on her part to provide relevant and accurate information to push the process forward.

"We want to say to the public that don't be surprised if at the end of Thursday they discover an interruption in their electricity service," Dobson said at the NWU headquarters in Kingston.

"We are going further in the interest of the general public to ensure that we can resolve this issue without resorting to industrial action. At that meeting we intend to advise the president that we are beyond our limit," said Dobson. "Seven years of waiting, and what are we getting? A repetition of delay as a consequence of the unprofessional behaviour of the human resources director of the company, and we cannot continue with her any longer. We are asking that she be removed from the process because she is a stumbling block."
The latest hold-up in the negotiations between the NWU, Bustamante Industrial Trade Union, Union of Clerical Administrative and Supervisory Employees, JPS Managers Association and the JPS resulted in the cancellation of an Oversight Committee meeting scheduled for yesterday.

Dobson said the unions were not notified about the cancellation and so yesterday they converged on the JPS headquarters in Kingston and requested a meeting with representatives of the company. He said the unions approached JPS because they wanted to know why concerns raised by Trevor Hamilton and Associates, the company the JPS hired to conduct the evaluation and reclassification process, were not rectified.

The letter addressed to Lyle stated that "the Oversight Committee meeting scheduled for Tuesday, March 25 is likely to generate more disappointments, frustrations, and mistrust than confidence that the pay structure and implementable pay data for the period 2001-2007 will be ready by April 30, 2008 as promised". Additionally, Dr Hamilton, who heads the firm, listed four reasons why he would not make himself available for the meeting.

Among them was the fact that "the consultants submitted the preliminary 2001 pay data to JPS March 12. However, to date, JPS has not returned it with the necessary review and validation so that it can be finalised as a credible presentation to the Oversight Committee". Four recommendations also accompanied the concerns. However, Dobson said efforts to find out why they were not dealt with at the meeting yesterday failed.

"When we left the meeting they were at item number one. We were not satisfied that what we were hearing was sufficient to take back to our members to tell them that the exercise proceeding was at a point where they could have payment by the latest the end of May," Dobson said.

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