Georgetown: The overhaul of the wages and salaries structure has been recommended for 14, 466 employees in the public service, including 4,471 who are employed on contract, according to the recent Commission of Inquiry (CoI) into the Public Service.
While the Commissioners discovered many anomalies, it has been recommended that the minimum salary of $50,000 in the GS1 grade be maintained while mid-point differences are recommended to be set at 20 per cent between all grades.
The spread of the grades has been set at 50 per cent to allow for the movement between the minimum and the maximum to accommodate those employees at and above the maximum.
The report called for the development of a performance-driven system aimed at measuring performance and matching same with payment.
During its work, the Commission discovered that while public servants received over the past two decades a 5 per cent or 8 per cent across-the-board increase in salary by the government, allowances were never increased.
“We have noted that apart from pay increases, allowances have not been adjusted to reflect current market rates for over 25 years. This appears to be most irregular and should be corrected.”
The Commissioners noted that wages and salaries in the Public Sector “are well below acceptable levels” and the perceived growing number of contracted employees earing more pay relative to their counterparts has worsened the situation, negatively affecting job performance.
Also of concern to the Commission, was the fact that contract workers benefited from the across-the board salary increases along with additional benefits provided for traditional public servants.
“Ideally, any increases in salary should be negotiated at the start of a new specific contract,” the report said.
In the report, which has been submitted to President David Granger, the Opposition Leader and the Speaker of the House, cites the need for rationalizing the status of pensionable and contract employees and de-bunching employees, and another phase to continue that process by way of thoroughly conducting job-evaluation studies.
The bunching of salaries is deemed a common feature of the Public Service and the annually imposed across-the-board increases , without regard to merit movements, have resulted in persons who have acquired years of service to be “closely aligned with new recruits coming into the Public Service.”
That in turn creates a feeling of disenchantment among long-service employees whose years of service are not considered.
Additionally, instances of red-circling, whereby persons are paid higher than the maximum amounts allocated under their grades, were cited as an area of grave concern. Based on a random sample conducted by the Commissioners, it was discovered that a large number of persons employed within the Public Service are benefiting from red-circling.
“Red-circling is cause for concern, since this is a random sample and may well represent a case where most persons are bunched at the Maximum. This puts a heavy cost on the government’s salaries budget. These anomalies were evident throughout all grades in the salary structure,” the report states.
Additionally, compensation management should be accepted as a key human resource management function that will see practices such as the grading of jobs, and the computation of salary structures being managed.
Further, it was recommended that the Department of the Public Service be solely responsible for wages and salaries administration, assuming the responsibilities undertaken by the Establishment Division of the Ministry of Finance relate to fixing salaries.
The auditing of employee salaries was also a key recommendation made by the Commissioners, who noted the need for the selection of a small group of Human Resource specialists to comprise the Compensation Review and Advisory Committee. That Committee, it was recommended, should also include Permanent Secretaries, heads of departments, and Public Service Management staff and the union.
It was also recommended that all wages and salaries agreements be in existence for a period of three to five years and that surveys be conducted between both private and public sector organisations in the CARICOM Region to compare the standards here.
“We recommend that a wage and salary administration policy be given consideration for the implementation in the Public Service to provide a reasonable and workable framework within which employees can be paid fair and equitable wages and salaries, in order to promote productivity and overall performance,” the report added.
The Public Service faces ever-increasing pressure to adjust to changing global, political, economic, social and technological trends and as such it is becoming increasingly important for there to be the restructuring of the Public Service. The restructuring, the report said, needs “to be treated as a matter of priority and urgency to ensure that it delivers services with high levels of efficiency and effectiveness that must meet the expectations of the general public, the national strategic objectives and international obligations.”
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