La Sonja Harrison, who has thrown her hat in the ring to lead the Jamaica Teachers’ Association (JTA) for a second time, has indicated that she has no intention of dropping her lawsuit against the union, even if she is elected.

Harrison, who was among the three JTA president-elect candidates participating in the association’s 2025 Presidential Debates, was responding to a view that “it was inappropriate for her to be seeking JTA presidency while she is suing the association”.

“There are matters of principle, there are matters of correcting whatever breach we find to have happened in our organisation. I’d say to my colleagues, there is no financial or personal gain in seeking to correct a constitutional breach, or what is perceived to be so, in an attempt to maintain the structure and operational principles of the JTA on which this 61-year-old organisation has been built. I seek an independent body to weigh before it the evidence that will be so presented and to give its judgment on same,” Harrison said.

According to the educator — who served as JTA president 2022-2023 — she is not unique in her decision to mount a legal challenge against an entity with which she is affiliated.

“We have a sitting principal of a very important and very well-known high school in Jamaica, a stakeholder — critical stakeholder that finances that organisation, that institution — and, yes, there was a breach and that individual stakeholder group was taken to the courts,” she argued.

“A former permanent secretary in the Ministry of Education, employed to the Ministry of Education, there was a breach and that individual sought remit in the courts of Jamaica. I, likewise, seek remit concerning a particular matter in the Jamaica Teachers’ Association,” Harrison, who is principal of St Faith’s Primary School in St Catherine, said firmly.

Responding to a query from her presidential candidate rival Jermaine Williams — a senior teacher at Manning’s School in Westmoreland — as to whether she would drop the case if it was not resolved and she were to win the presidential race, Harrison firmly said, “The matter before the court is a matter before the court, and we’re seeking a response from an independent arbiter to weigh the evidence before same and to bring a resolution to the matter before the courts.”

The situation which has been a bone of contention in the teachers’ union began when in March 2023 the JTA signed an agreement to accept the wage offer presented by the Ministry of Finance and the Public Service that would guarantee a 20 per cent minimum increase in basic salary after tax. The agreement took effect April 1, 2022. However, on the day of the signing of the compensation review memorandum of understanding, Harrison, who was president at the time, was unavailable at the point when signatures were to be affixed to the document.

She had reportedly ditched the meeting after asking educator Leighton Johnson, who was the president-elect at the time, to do the signing.

In July last year Harrison filed a lawsuit in the Supreme Court aimed at nullifying the agreement with the Government. In the suit, Harrison contends that the special delegates’ vote held virtually in March last year to accept the wage offer presented by the Ministry of Finance and the Public Service was in breach of the JTA’s constitution.

Eighty per cent of the delegates who attended the virtual meeting voted to accept the three-year agreement. At the time, then newly installed JTA President Mark Smith, in his presidential address, said he supported the move taken by Harrison to vote against the package as what teachers were carrying home was unacceptable.

Harrison, Williams and Dr Maureen Mullings-Nelson are vying for the post of JTA president-elect 2025-26. The winner will succeed Mark Malabver, who takes office on August 31, 2025 and will serve one year.