The Tribune

IT’S hard to know what was likely to come out of Prime Minister Dr Hubert Minnis’ meeting with unions this week.

Cramming so many groups with so many different complaints into one room was never likely to resolve any specific issues – and so it proved, with rumblings in this winter of discontent continuing.

It seems that Dr Minnis was hoping that the presence of the nation’s leader might be enough to show unions that the government is taking matters seriously, but that alone isn’t going to pay the bills.

The disputes strike to the very heart of the running of the nation – doctors are complaining, nurses are protesting, teachers are concerned.

For some, it’s about money. For others, it’s about working conditions. And for some, we fear, it is about furthering their own personal agendas. Solving these will cost money for the government to solve.

At the same time, however, we have had Cabinet Secretary Camille Johnson criticising the country’s civil servants, saying that the public service sector was overstaffed by up to 40 percent, and that the cadre of deputy permanent secretaries was “extraordinarily weak”.

Are we robbing Peter (the nurses, doctors and teachers) of the pay and conditions they need to pay Paul (the underperforming members of the public service)? Could our money be used better?

Well, if that’s the case, it doesn’t seem as if the government is planning to rectify that particular balance any time soon – with Public Service Minister Brensil Rolle galloping to reassure civil servants and claiming they are an “easy target”.

It seems that the Minnis government is in the middle of a rather unwieldy balancing act. Goodness knows that the vast weight of the public workforce can be a difficult one to manage, but there are mixed signals about tackling genuine problem areas as opposed to merely keeping workers happy come what may.

The international report that highlighted the weakness of the civil service picked out examples of unusual practices – such as teachers being transferred to other parts of the public service while remaining on the Ministry of Education’s payroll, exacerbating teacher shortages because those transferred had not formally left their posts. In short, the ministry struggled to replace those who had been moved because they were still on that ministry’s budget.

So perhaps – as the government deals with the demands of the unions to resolve long-standing issues – the unions too can play a part in helping to reform situations that are causing extra workload for their own members.

It won’t help the bottom line for the government – the demand for more money that will have to be found in times of tight pockets – but if sides are sitting down together, then maybe this is the time to resolve issues that affect the whole nation, not just the two sides of the table.