TRADE unions representing HEART Trust/NTA employees on Thursday signed on to a 20 per cent pay increase over two years as a settlement of their prolonged pay dispute.

The agreement is comprised of a 15.5 per cent increase in the first year and a further 4.5 per cent in the second year, dating back to July 2006.

The 20 per cent is the same offer from the management which the unions had been rejecting since March. However, it was accepted after the intervention of the Minister of State in the Ministry of Finance and Planning, Fitz Jackson.

Jackson called the parties to a meeting at his ministry on Wednesday, at which it was decided that an 8.1 per cent salary increase in 2005/2006, which came out of a reclassification exercise, should not be computed in the new increases.

The management had been insisting that the increases triggered by the reclassification should be computed in the total increase. The unions had rejected the proposal.

However, 3.9 per cent will be deducted from the first year’s increase to cover payments which were being made to the workers under the so-called “hardship allowance”. This allowance was introduced in late 2005, to help public sector workers covered by the first Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) meet double-digit inflation that year.

HEART Trust/NTA employees received the allowance beyond the end of the MOU because of the failure to settle a new agreement. The Ministry of Finance said it could not overlook that necessity, as other public sector workers had to reimburse the payments.

The unions were demanding a 30 per cent increase over two years, while the management insisted on 20 per cent. The dispute led to a strike by the over 1,000 workers at the 26 HEART/NTA institutions, ranging from administrators to ancillary staff, in early March. The Ministry of Labour referred the dispute to the Industrial Disputes Tribunal in March, but the parties requested to go back to direct talks.

At Wednesday’s meeting the HEART Trust/NTA was represented by director of personnel, Sonia Lynch. The four unions were represented by – Patrick Smith, Jamaica Teachers’ Association; Fitzroy Bryan, Jamaica Union of Public Officers and Public Employees; Alden Brown, Bustamante Industrial Trade Union, and Howard Duncan of the National Workers’ Union.