The Tribune

By KEILE CAMPBELL

Tribune Staff Reporter

kcampbell@tribunemedia.net

BAHAMAS Union of Teachers president Belinda Wilson said teachers are seeking a 20 percent salary increase over three years after the government presented a salary package it had previously rejected.

Mrs Wilson said negotiations had been underway since October 2025 and that the parties returned to the table last Thursday.

"The government presented the same salary package that we've rejected already," she said at an orientation for more than 100 new educators yesterday.

"What we are asking for is not exorbitant. It's reasonable. But 'what they presented to us is unreasonable."

Mrs Wilson declined to disclose the government's offer.

She said all non-financial articles had been agreed, leaving the proposed salary increase and several other finance-related articles unresolved.

Mrs Wilson said the government’s negotiators needed to refer the remaining issues to their superiors and bring financial officials to the table.

“Its now time for the Minister of Finance and his team to get involved with the negotiations, so that we will be able to speak clearly to them as to what the numbers are that we are looking at," she said.

Mrs Wilson criticized the government's approach, saying its offer was communicated through a letter addressed to chief consultant Bernard Evans and signed by Financial Secretary Simon Wilson.

"They have not presented any rationale," she said. "They have not provided any data to say why they can't pay one amount versus the other amount, and so we expect them to negotiate and not to dictate."

She also accused the government of failing to negotiate in good faith and said the union did not trust it.

“When you get to negotiations, you have to come with clean hands, and you have to come in good faith,” Mrs Wilson said. “We’ve been working with the government in good faith, their hands are dirty, and I told them this.”

Mrs WIlson did not say whether the impasse would affect the opening of schools, however, she did reveal the her union had held off industrial action around April and May, despite 90.5 per cent of members who participated in a union survey voting in favor of action.

“Industrial action does not come in one form,” she said. “It comes in several different forms. I will not tell you which form we will use if we are forced to do so.”

Mrs Wilson said she would prepare a document setting out the union’s proposal more clearly. She did not give a date for the next negotiating meeting.