The Government and the Jamaica Confederation of Trade Unions (JCTU) have inched closer to a settlement of the current public sector pay dispute, and an agreement is likely within a week, the Jamaica Observer has learnt.

This follows the introduction of improved offers from the Government on several fringe benefits, as well as a new four-year wage package, which brings the total increase over the period to 16 per cent.

The new offers followed a meeting between Prime Minister Andrew Holness and leaders of several of the bodies negotiating a new agreement, including the 11-union JCTU, by far the most powerful confederation of trade unions in Jamaica.

The JCTU lists among its members major trade unions such as the Bustamante Industrial Trade Union (BITU), National Workers’ Union (NWU), Jamaica Association of Local Government Officers (JALGO), Union of Technical, Administrative, and Supervisory Personnel (UTASP), the Trade Union Congress (TUC).

The Observer was told that during discussions since the meeting with the prime minister, the unions have been studying two offers from the Government. The first, and apparently the most appealing of the two, proposes a five per cent increase for 2017/18; two per cent for 2018/19, which begins April 1; four per cent from April 1, 2019; and another five per cent as of April 1, 2020.

The second format for spreading the total 16 per cent increase would allow for six per cent for 2017/18, zero per cent in 2018/19, and five per cent for the final two fiscal years 2019/20 and 2020/21, each.

Finance Minister Audley Shaw, while not giving any details of the developments, recently expressed optimism that the “Government is close to inking a deal” with unions for the new contract period.

He admitted, however, that it would not involve any major increases in wages and allowances, but that the Government would be “flexible and innovative” in arriving at an agreement.

In confirming that “it was not the Government’s plan to introduce new taxes in the next budget, which will be tabled in another few weeks, Shaw indicated the new direction the talks were taking as far as the Government is concerned.

Last week, president of the JCTU and general secretary of JALGO, Helene Davis-Whyte, during her address to a forum on public sector wage negotiations at the Hugh Lawson Shearer Trade Union Education Institute at Mona, championed “a more structured approach to the negotiations”.

She suggested that the present round of negotiations could have benefited from this approach.

“We have been moving from crisis to crisis with different rounds of negotiations, but when the crisis dissipates we go back to our old style. It is time we look at taking a more structured approach to wage talks,” the JCTU president stated.

According to Davis-Whyte, the time had come for wage negotiations in Jamaica to focus more on interest-based bargaining in an attempt to advance the concerns of “both sides”.

“We have been moving from crisis to crisis with different rounds of negotiations, but when the crisis dissipates we go back to our old style; it is time we look at taking a more structured approach to wage talks,” the JCTU leader stated.

According to head of the institute, Danny Roberts, a former vice-president of the NWU, the traditional approach to collective bargaining in Jamaica and the Caribbean is predicated on a “zero-sum” basis, that fosters conflict and power bargaining “with the endgame set to have winners and losers”.

Like Davis-Whyte, Roberts promotes a more modern approach to wage negotiations.

Roberts confirmed that the Public Sector Transformation Oversight Committee, which he co-chairs, is promoting a change from the current strategy in which an “advocate” seeks to obtain all or most of the outcomes his party desires to an interest-based, or the “win-win” bargaining model, which suggests that an agreement can be reached if the parties look at their underlying interests instead of stated positions.

Roberts told the Observer recently that his committee was not only concerned, but is already making arrangements to hold discussions with the public sector unions towards moving to the interest-based bargaining model.

“In the final analysis, we have to come up with a solution that [will be] a win for the workers and a win for the country, too,” the veteran trade unionist said about the way forward.