And turning back now to Budget matters and the immediate fallout from the Prime Minister's speech, the Public Service Union remains up in arms at what has become the certainty of a 10% cut to their salaries and a freeze on increments.
It's a government decision that's pushing the joint unions to Industrial action. But what does that look like mid-pandemic? That's what we asked union President Gerald Henry Jr. today as he stepped out of a strategic PSU Council meeting to discuss a few ways in which the unions can become a thorn in the government's side.
Gerald Henry Jr., President, PSU
"There are a series of things that you can do, you can have go-slows, you can have work to rule and of course, it elevates all the way up to strike which is the ultimate industrial action, exactly what we are going to do is what we are discussing you know today but it will be a sustained effort. It has to be sustained in order for us to achieve whatever it is that our objective is."
"We are a responsible union, we don't want to impact too much as it were so that we put ourselves in a deeper hole, however, these things have to take place in order for us to also let our position be known and the fact that we recognize that there are other means that the government can use to recover this money. It can't be that it's on the back of our public officers again, it has always been on the backs of public officers, it has to stop. We did not put ourselves there. It was not us. Although I will admit that some of our public officers facilitated, but for the most part it was not the public officers who did that, so we need to
ensure that our public officers quality of life is maintained as much as possible. We continue to work, some of us are working overtime and are not being paid for the work that we do. Some of us lost our lives during the Covid19 pandemic, because we continue to work, we put our lives at risk when there are storms and floods going out to rescue individuals and we just want to be treated fairly."
As for whether a notice of impending industrial action has been sent to the labor department, PSU 1st Vice President Dean Flowers tells us they're waiting for legal advice, but he says that the letter was certainly on today's agenda.
