Teachers unhappy with negotiations

TTUTA is cautioning that teachers will not hesitate to show their collective will in defence of the survival of their families and the education system as they cannot continue to cope with the rising cost of living on 2008 salaries.

The association explained that ever since a job evaluation exercise was completed in 2000, salary negotiations for teachers have involved the use of the ELM survey to set teachers’ salaries.

This method of determining salaries is a systematic data-driven approach meant to yield salaries for teachers congnisant of their worth and serve to attract and attain the most competent persons through comparable, competitive salaries.

TTUTA said they made initial submissions in November 2009, negotiations for the present period began in March 2010 with the establishment of a joint sub-committee between the CPO and TTUTA to conduct the ELM survey. They also submitted proposals on non-salary items since October 2010.

They accused the CPO of trying to bully the association into accepting a “concocted, unsupportable method” for setting salaries which would have no real, proper connection to the survey.

They also accused the CPO of resorting to “trickery” to find a way to justify very small increases in salaries for teachers.

TTUTA explained that teachers constitute one of the core factors in the development of quality education and poor, non-competitive teacher salaries will lead to teacher shortages. They said there will be insufficient teachers in the schools to nurture your children and facilitate their full development. They demanded the CPO promptly completes the survey and negotiates a “just settlement” on proper teacher salaries in relation to the ELM salaries.