Jamaica Teachers’ Association (JTA) president-elect candidates posing during the final day of the 60th anniversary Education Conference at the Ocean Coral Spring in Trelawny. They are (from left) Jermaine Williams, Terrian Okeef Saunders, Georgia Green, Dorian Allen Rainford, Eaton McNamee and Mark Malabver. Missing is Suzette Baker Tulloch.

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RENEGOTIATING WITH the Jamaican Government for “liveable wages” on behalf of educators took precedence during the final day of the Jamaica Teachers’ Association (JTA) 60th anniversary Education Conference as six president-elect candidates outlined their manifestos.

From concerns over the handling of the last wage negotiation to additional ways to keep teachers on the island, very ambitious plans were brought to the table by the candidates as they sought to encourage the buy-in of their colleagues.

President-elect candidate Mark Malabver, principal of Yallahs High School in St Thomas, spoke at great length of the financial issues faced by educators over the last decades.

“Between 2012 and 2016, we experienced four years of wage freeze. In recent times, we went through a reclassification exercise, and we did not come out well for it. We gave up incremental increases in our salaries and this is against best practices. We also gave up master’s allowance,” Malabver said during his address on Thursday afternoon at the conference held at Ocean Coral Spring in Trelawny.

Malabver shared that with the compensation review, the allowance attached to a postgraduate degree “has been slashed by more than 50 per cent” and is now “somewhere around $4,666”.

He further pointed out that monies given to beneficiaries of the government’s Programme of Advancement Through Health and Education (PATH) exceed that of the graduate allowance.

The Yallahs High principal also said that teachers are being “robbed” and deserve to be paid more, based on an Ernst & Young report.

“The Ernst & Young report values the teachers at $3.4 million, but the Government, in their divine wisdom, decided to put the teachers on another scale. We were supposed to be on band six, and as of April 2024, we should have been at $4.2 million. That means the Government has taken from us $1.2 million. That boils down to $900,000 after tax and $75,000 per month after tax. That is how much you have been robbed,” said Malabver.

Teacher retention incentive
At the same time, Jermaine Williams, senior teacher at Manning’s School in Westmoreland, said that if elected, he intends to focus on ways to end the yearly teacher migration. This, he, however, pointed out, will require increased compensation and incentives to attract educators to the island.

“As a team, we will be negotiating with the Government so every teacher can comfortably take care of themselves and their families. We have lost many of our educators to foreign shores and our education sector has been shaken up over the last year. As a team, we will be introducing a retention incentive,” said Williams.

The senior teacher proposed that the Government implements a US$2,000 incentive for teachers who have given at least 10 years of service to the local education sector. In addition to that, Williams intends to lobby that teachers are paid US$10 for each school-based assessment (SBA) that they mark for Caribbean Examinations Council tests.

For his part, principal of Mandeville’s Broadleaf Primary School, Eaton McNamee, noted that there is need for a team in the JTA which primarily focuses on salary negotiation.

“Quite a few of our educators are not seeing what we thought we would have seen when we were told that the promised land has been seen,” said McNamee.

He said that plans are afoot to implement a team trained in “21st century negotiation standards”, if he should become the next president-elect.

“Presently, we have teachers’ salaries fluctuating like the Jamaican dollar and we also have systems where teachers are receiving letters that they were overpaid,” McNamee pointed out.

In the meantime, Georgia Green, vice principal of St James High School, said that she will also be calling for additional benefits for local educators through the National Housing Trust (NHT).

“I will be lobbying the Government to increase the NHT benefits to our teachers [because] $7.5 million is not enough. You need to match it with the market value of houses,” Green said.

According to Green, her calls for an increase in NHT benefits will be coupled with salary negotiations to favour educators who have worked hard to attain their qualifications.

“I will continue to lobby for salary and condition of services. The recent restructuring saw our teachers very dissatisfied and so I will lobby for the trained graduates entering the system to be at the starting point. Teachers you have worked, and you are experienced. I am lobbying for you to be compensated [based] on your experience and your qualifications,” she said.