Another test for UWI

It’s November. Exams are underway. Teachers are unhappy and for the second year running, the West Indies Group of University Teachers (WIGUT) is calling on the University of the West Indies’ St Augustine campus to resolve salary negotiations.

A year after teachers protested the pace of negotiations on campus, they were out and about again in red polos, protesting on Thursday and Friday.

The successful salary negotiations at the Cave Hill, Barbados and Mona, Jamaica campuses added to their annoyance.

“St Augustine staff remain the poorest in the UWIverse,” a press release from WIGUT claimed.

UWI’s management said they are constrained to abide by the decisions of the Chief Personnel Officer (CPO) and reductions in state funding, including a ten per cent cut in 2023, further limit them.

In April 2023, awaiting a remit from the CPO to begin salary negotiations, the university’s teaching staff refused to sign and submit final exam papers, refused to upload coursework grades, and shut down office hours and remedial classes.

UWI teachers threatened to do so again at exam time in November last year, and this week’s protest action is also a harbinger of refreshed hardline actions.

WIGUT remains firm in its rejection of the CPO’s two per cent offer, since matched by the blanket four per cent to public servants, and threatened to withhold the submission of exam papers until the government makes a better offer.

That brinksmanship didn’t work in 2023, and the CPO hasn’t been moved by the protests of angry university lecturers and professors, nor is the state budging from its four per cent.

Finance Minister Colm Imbert’s position a year ago was that UWI had grown so rapidly that it had also outgrown its ability to finance itself.

That’s an unusual position for a member of the cabinet to take, given the dearth of tertiary-educated workers necessary to achieve the digital transformation goals the government is keen to meet.

It might have been more strategic for the government to set manpower targets and skillsets while providing targeted funding to deliver the professionals the country needs to advance its ambitions.

WIGUT is trying to achieve satisfactory closure in its negotiations for salaries for 2014-2107. Mr Imbert told the House Friday that the proposal would incur $701 million in back pay and an annual recurrent cost of $70 million. He said the union has refused to consider the offer for 2017-2020, adding if it agreed to the four per cent, this would amount to $79 million in back pay and an annual recurrent expenditure of $12 million.

WIGUT’s demands are being aired even as TTUTA begins negotiations with the government for 2020-2023.

Mr Imbert believes that campus operations won’t collapse because of this impasse.

That’s true, but a strategic modification of the enthusiasm teachers bring to their work will also bring the hammer of work-to-rule down on the student body, the only anvil available for WIGUT’s discontent.

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