Letter of the Day | What massive win?

THE EDITOR, Madam:

We seek from this newspaper clarity in its reporting as it pertains an article headlined, “Massive Win for teachers” published on April 06, 2025.

The Jamaica Teachers’ Association, too, needs to communicate with its members on what this article really means.

Teachers in several quarters are unaware of what this ‘massive win’ is. To begin with, for many years, teachers enjoyed an incremental system, where their years of service mattered, and each year, after receiving their permanency, they would go one step up on the salary scale. Effective April, 2022, that ceased, and caused inequity in the workspace, where senior teachers ended up on the same salary band as new/junior teachers. That was a great blunder made with the restructuring of salaries in the public sector, and might I say, a failed negotiation of teachers’ salaries by its representatives.

That error needs to be corrected. Is this the ‘massive win’? The public is being conditioned now to think that teachers are getting a great slice of the cake. Not so! This was what they should have been getting that was taken from them. Teachers’ standards of living need to improve. They often suffer humiliation, even from students who compare what they make from their informal engagements to that which teachers earn, to the point of ridicule. Given the unattractive compensation package, many of our students, especially males, do not find (a career in) education appealing. Gambling and scamming have captured their focus.

Many of us are confused about what the article is alluding to, and the JTA’s silence in communicating its official position. Some imagine and hope that, indeed, there is a retroactive payment associated with the resumption of incremental pay, which is well deserved.

Answers are needed. I am confused! This is about our salary, and it needs to be clear: no politics, no games.

Is it that teachers will be paid up for what was forcefully taken away in 2022 and then be placed on the correct band/point going forward? Or, is it that there is no back payment involved, only that we will move up the salary ladder 1-3 points, where applicable?

We beg the JTA, by this same medium, to explain to the thousands of teachers what this, ‘retroactive increment’ is about.

We have nothing to celebrate at this time. What we are anticipating is a tidy salary package that can afford us a decent standard of living. One, where we can buy a reliable car to take us to school, take out a small mortgage to get us out of rented houses and adequate monies for groceries.

I am anticipating a 40 per cent increase in salary. This would be a massive win!

MARIE HENRY

Concerned teacher

Clarendon