MONTEGO BAY, St James — Noting that he is fully aware of the need to lower the wage bill, Opposition Leader Dr Peter Phillips is, however, calling on the Government to “wheel and come again” and be more warm-hearted towards public sector workers during the ongoing wage and salary negotiations.

“And if it is even to demonstrate the attitude of caring, we are calling on the Government to wheel and come again and show a different and a better face to the workers of Jamaica,” Phillips charged.

He echoed comments last week by People’s National Party (PNP) shadow minister for the public service Lambert Brown, who described Government’s offer of six per cent as a “gimmick”, saying that Finance Minister Audley Shaw was “taking the workers for fools”.

Dr Phillips, who was the minister of finance during the PNP Administration, argued that he is fully aware of the need to keep the wage bill under control, but at the same time recommended that Government should be seeking to improve whatever benefits they can for the workers.

“It is not just a matter of needing to lower the wage bill. I understand that, over time, the wage bill will have to come down. But how it comes down? What other areas of claims you address? When we were negotiating with the workers when they had a wage freeze, we found a way to do a one-off payment just to ensure that the workers felt part of the national family and that we were mindful of the sacrifices that they were making,” he said.

Dr Phillips, who was speaking at a PNP town hall meeting at the Montego Bay Cultural Centre last Thursday night, spoke out in solidarity with the workers that the offer was woefully inadequate. He cited that the increase would be eaten up by inflation, which Government projects will run between four to six per cent.

“They offering three per cent a year and the Government’s own projection for inflation says that inflation is going to run at four to six per cent per annum; three per cent a year would, in reality, in real wage terms, what you can buy with the money at the supermarket would leave public sector workers worse off, and that is unfair given the burden that they have borne already to put them in that situation,” Dr Phillips said.

He recounted that public sector workers made a great sacrifice during the period of wage freeze between 2012 and 2015.

“I am not going to suggest that we didn’t have the problem before, but one of the reasons why we need to insist that the Government takes a more realistic approach to the public sector wage negotiations is simply rooted in the fact that public sector workers bore a major part of the burden of adjustment in the period between 2012 and 2015,” Dr Phillips reflected.

“We released some of the pressure in the 2015 to 2017 contract period but they have a legitimate right to expect more.”