Contradiction in the Public and Teaching Services Structures

The Editor,

One is left to wonder about the contradiction in the respective structures of

1. a) Public Service –           Grade fourteen (14) highest

Grade one (1) lowest; and

1. b) Teaching Service –           Grade TS19 highest

–           Grade TS 01 lowest numbered in addition to a Grade Special

(1)       Interestingly Grade TS 01 s made up of four (4) subgrades that are valued at each at  Maximum only – the beginning of the organization structure in terms of some promotion   – presumably infant schools.

(2)       Comparably, if not nonsensically, the highest special as distinct from the intervening Grades, is valued only at a significant maximum.

(3)       Mythically special tops that are listed as nineteen lower grades, too many of which are sub-structured as to total twenty-nine.

Total Subscales – a payment/ 706 structure suspected to exist since the Colonial era (except for the very recent deletion of the minimal at TS 1.

But quite apart from the arithmetic faultiness between some scales, there is the substantive organisational absence of performance evaluation award that was once forthcoming some while ago, and about which there is currently normal expectation amongst the existing bargaining parties (Ministry and Union so that published reports only refer to size of annual payment increases –reflecting a fundamental deficiency in compensation management as practiced by the more professional organizations/ governments locally and overseas. The current impasse must be considered to be desirable by too many witnesses anywhere.

There are such non-sensical deceptors as:

Special    –           Non Sensical

• No Scale
• No performance Evaluation
• No increment

Temporary   –           How could a career be temporary?

Unqualified Masters/ Mistress  –  how is his/ her performance evaluated?

Qualified Masters  – What is the nature and when is timing of certification and                                          compensation.

Then there is the issue of some higher positions being valued less than the categories below. The fact is that all the foregoing reflects a state of CONSTIPATION within a system from which results are similarly delivered by fellow Caricom Education Systems.

Why are these professionals not invited as a neutral mediators to resolve this shared chronic state of mind?

What will be the future of our children – benefiting from a state increase over the next three years?

Yours truly,
B. John
Eldest Human Resources Management and
Organisation Development Consultant