THE threat of an additional burden for Jamaicans across the island to access water has diminished following a meeting of the parties at the Ministry of Labour and Social Security (MLSS) on Monday.

The five unions representing the over 2,000 employees have acknowledged a National Water Commission (NWC) email they received with responses from the Ministry of Finance and the Public Service to concerns they had raised at a meeting on July 3. The talks between the NWC and the trade unions will resume on Wednesday, after a promising start at the ministry on Monday.

“We made progress,” was the response from vice-president of the Bustamante Industrial Trade Union (BITU) Wesley Nelson, who was among a number of union leaders and delegates who went to the ministry yesterday after a 72-hour warning which threatened to close down water supplies.

The BITU is among the five unions representing the workers who are demanding a revision of their so-called pay bands, which they claim were developed for the publicly owned water producers, particularly for the least-paid workers. The other unions are the National Workers’ Union (NWU), the Jamaica Union of Public Officers and Public Employees (JUPOPE), the Jamaica Association of Local Government Officers (JALGO), and the blue-collar NWC Executive Staff Association.

The NWC officials and the trade unionists were not prepared to go into the details of the discussions at the meeting, despite displaying optimism that by Wednesday’s meeting most of the issues would have been dealt with. However, there is a feeling that a fair enough level of agreement was reached to ignore the 72-hour warning of strike action which would have risked a water crisis across the island.

The NWC is a statutory organisation charged with the responsibility of providing potable water and wastewater services for the people of Jamaica. The Labour Relations and Industrial Disputes Act (LRIDA) obliges the company to issue a 72-hour warning of any industrial action to be taken by its workers. It has a basic staff of some 444 white-collar employees represented by the ESA, and a much larger staff of blue-collar workers represented by the five trade unions.

In the meantime the unions will today meet with delegates to discuss the offers made.