FROM THE PRESIDENTâS DESK We are living in interes!ng !mes. The Jamaican public sector has serious expecâ ta!ons regarding its future and there has been serious anxiety that has manifested itself into Industrial Ac!ons or the threat of it. How did we get to this place and how do we move on from it? The answer lies in the change management process and how we listen to each other. It has to do with trust as well and when we have all the variables going in the wrong direc!on, what we will have is serious discontent. Cri!cal to the management of any change process is communica!onâŚWhat? How? When? and Where? are ques!ons we should all try to answer to bridge the divide between employer and employee. My interac!on with the GoJ change management process has shown that we have been inconsistent with communica!on or we have not invested enough in communica!on to make the change less stressful. Also, we o#en believe that merely ac!ng on our authority is enough to get everyone to fall in line as obedient li$le civil servants. The tone from the top is very important and workers need to feel that they are a part of the decision making about their own future. There will always be concessions in any change process but it must not always appear to be one sided and this is where the principle of collec!ve bargaining comes in. Simply, collec!ve bargaining is the process through which a group of workers combine their common interest and make representa!on to their employer to arrive through dialogue at an agreement that both sides can be comfortable with while not necessarily being the best outcome for either side.
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Jamaica has been in crisis mode since the mid 1970âs and as a country we seemingly have not had a break moving from one crisis to another. When these crises are global it exacerbates the chalâ lenges, we have locally. Most of these crises manifest themselves economically and âbread and bu$erâ issues now become the primary concern of the worker as they see themselves dri#ing deeper into poverty. It is the Collec!ve bargaining consensus building mechanism that has allowed us to remain afloat through all crises. We cannot depart from its principles now. The Compensa!on Review in the mind of the worker is to be the answer to their âbread and bu$erâ dilemma and for the Government it is an opportunity to answer the call of the worker for be$er compensa!on in a simplified, equitable and predictable framework. In essence it appears that both par!es want the same thing and should be working towards the common objec!ve of be$er compensa!on however that message got lost and the hope of the review is becoming one of trepida!on. All is not lost and the recent res!veness in the Public Sector presented an opportunity for all the stakeholders to have a reset and to go back to core principles in managing the change process. We must avoid the tempta!on to be reac!onary, we must iden!fy the process, s!ck to the process, and trust the process. Th dynamics of change will
2021/2022 Annual Report
