CIVIL SERVICE SALARIES AND GRADES RESTRUCTURED

The long and much awaited salary and grade restructuring for the public service is taking effect on 1 January 2006. The announcement was made on Monday 19 December by His Excellency, Governor Thomas Macan.

The new salary structure is the result of the Job Classification and Salaries Plan Project, which began in April 2002, when KPMG (Jamaica) was commissioned to study the Public Service salary structure. In addition to the work done by KPMG, a local Evaluation Committee examined individual job descriptions to determine the appropriate grade for each post within the Public Service. In addition, Executive Council in August 2003 established an Appeal Committee to address individual concerns coming out of the reclassification process.

“At that time, Executive Council was concerned that the project did not address the grading of non-established personnel, and therefore charged the Department of Human Resources and the Ministry of Finance with reviewing the grade and salary structure of non-established employees. Council further wished to see a process whereby the Service itself reviewed the proposed grade structure, and therefore created an Appeals Committee to address individual concerns. Realising that these decisions would cause delays, Executive Council approved a 7.5 percent salary increase for all Civil Servants, including teachers, police, and non-established workers, retroactive to January 2003,” the Governor said on Monday 19 December 2005. The Governor said that all non-established workers who have served 10 years or more will be eligible for permanent and pensionable status beginning 1 January 2006. This means that both established and non-established employees will now have the same grade and salary structure.

Not a general increase in salaries

The Queen’s Representative stressed that “this exercise is not and was never conceived as a general increase in salaries. There have been two such across-the-board increases in recent years—one of 7.5 per cent in 2001 and the further one of an additional 7.5 per cent in 2003 which I have already mentioned... some jobs will now be at a higher relative grade than they were, and some lower. This is no reflection on how the job holder is discharging his/her duties. It does reflect the best judgment of the experts, backed up by our own analysis, about the load that the job carries as compared to other jobs. As functions change, and units grow or shrink, this is inevitable. We need to recognize this in our own structures.”

Each civil servant will be sent a document explaining how the new structure and grade will affect him or her.

Pension reform planned

Governor Macan informed that pension reform will be high on the agenda in 2006. “We need to have a system that provides adequate retirement benefits for workers that have given years of dedicated service. But it has to be one that the Territory can afford; as people live longer after retirement, the pension bill is getting bigger. We shall need to address difficult issues including later retirement and greater financial contributions from those in employment,” the Governor said.

HR Talk Sessions

The new salary structure was the topic of an HR Talk Session hosted by the Department of Government’s Human Resources on Monday afternoon at the Central Administration Complex, where public servants were able to ask questions and make comments about the scheme.

Speaking at the session, Director of Human Resource Mr. David Archer said the new structure addresses several weaknesses in the existing one. For example, he said the new structure makes allowances for persons who remain in technical and specialist professions for many years by extending the number of steps within the specific grade.

“We are trying to accommodate longevity in the Public Service,” he said.

At Monday’s HR Talk Session, Mr. Archer stressed that although the formal appeals process is completed, public servants are still encouraged to bring any concerns they have about the salary scale forward. “The Department of Human Resources is going to continue to do what we do on a day-to-day basis, which is, respond to matters that are brought to our attention. We need to know about problems, and I ask you to bring these forward formally,” he said.