As I sat in my office polishing off the last portions of cook-up salt fish and yellow yam with my staff, one of my dearest and ardent constituents walked in. As always, Rose was immaculate. She is one of the few female teachers I know who still wears stockings (aka pantyhose) to work. A garment I have never been able to render.

“Good afternoon, MP!”

“Hi Rose, come sit. You want some tea and food?”

There were five of us women sitting around the large table late last Thursday afternoon. Rose is profoundly analytical and wise. We are the same age and both have one son now in their early 20s.

I enjoy speaking with her as she gives me a different perspective on everyday circumstances that most people take for granted.

This day was no different, as we began looking at how she was feeling about her future and how she felt it would turn out if things continued the same way.

She remains unnerved about the public sector wage negotiations as a teacher who has spent years in the classroom and is worried about entering the next decade of her life.

Most of the early decades of a woman’s life is used for her personal and career development. She works hard to be able to enjoy the fruits of her labour in her later decades.

Sometimes our goals don’t materialise in the linear way we had planned initially. In Jamaica, the reality for some women is the lack of resources or opportunities to complete their education on time, no job security, having to take care of children, divorce, being in an abusive relationship, or having the responsibility for their entire family as the only breadwinner which sets their goals back. On the other hand, this is not the case for the top one per cent who are afforded multiple opportunities from birth.

However, regardless of who they are or where they come from, if any woman feels that she has not arrived to where she needs to be by age 49, then approaching the decade of fifty to sixty can be daunting.

It was this decade for women that Rose and I engaged in.

Like me, she will be 50 next year. While I am changing careers and enthusiastic about that next phase, Rose is apprehensive about her next 10 years.

Why? As a teacher, she never got a realistic salary increase based on her experience and years of service in the classroom as a result of the Government’s reclassification last year. So now she is worried.

“What I don’t understand is if you told us years ago that what I needed was a diploma to become a teacher, and now you say if I want to be paid better I need to have a degree, why am I going to take up money to go and study versus using the same money to buy a piece of land to make money right away?

“Therefore, MP, shouldn’t my experience for all these years be worth something, then? If I worked in a corporation and moved up through the ranks based on my years of service, competence, and experience, wouldn’t that company pay me for that?”

“Yes, Rose, the company would consider your years of experience as being qualified. It’s called a grandfather clause.”

I advised her that there is usually a grandfather clause that considers those situations.

A grandfather clause is a new law or regulation provision allowing individuals or entities who were already engaged in a particular activity, or met specific criteria before the new law or regulation was enacted, to continue that activity without being subject to the new requirements. Essentially, it exempts existing situations from the new rules or standards.

For example, government institutions have regulations that require minimum qualifications for a job; individuals who have been working in the industry for a specified period of years are deemed suitably qualified.

This has happened in the past for even attorneys. Those with no legal degree, but had been articled for years with an established firm, were granted status as attorneys.

Recently, real estate salespersons who have been practising for years and earning their income were ‘grandfathered in’ and deemed qualified.

Rose continued, as we all sat together talking, and as she spoke, she encouraged me to raise her concerns and those of many other women who are anxious about a future living in Jamaica on a salary with very little purchasing power or the possibility of a liveable pension after retirement.

Women who have children who are university graduates, like her son, leave Jamaica because they cannot get a job.

“MP, what if I get sick? I can’t go to a private hospital right now. I can’t even save money because nothing is left after I buy groceries, pay my utilities, and buy gas for my car,” she said.

Rose continues to go to school every day to teach our future generation, all the while considering better financial options for herself outside of teaching. Yet we wonder why so many of our women feel so discouraged about their future in Jamaica?

Opening highways when people cannot afford to drive the distances or announcing that the economy is rated well internationally, but the benefits are not trickling down to some of our teachers in our local classrooms, has bred contempt and indifference to the patriotism in many of our people’s hearts.

As leaders, we must find a way to balance the disproportionality of wages for those with experience in our teaching profession. It is truly unfair to watch someone give his/her life, grit, and heart to an industry, yet be told when it’s time to increase their pay that they are on the same scale as another without the same experience, save a degree from college or university.

Prime Minister, I urge you to revisit the matter and do right by our teachers on the whole.

(In loving memory of my friend Marcia Erskine who dedicated her life to uplifting so many others.)