Unions Accept Government’s Proposal on 8.5% salary restoration

Minister of Public Service, Henry Charles Usher, expressed that he is elated following confirmation that both the Public Service Union (PSU) and the Belize National Teachers’ Union (BNTU) have accepted the government’s proposal on the delivery of the long-promised 8.5% salary restoration. The agreement brings to an end the months of negotiations surrounding how the reinstated funds would be disbursed. Usher expressed that now they are able to focus on other matters. 

Henry Charles Usher, Minister of Public Service and Governance and NEMO: “The negotiations, the discussions that we’ve had with the union started from 2021. So I want to make that clear, it’s not that we came into these types of discussions because of the request for the 8.5 salary adjustment. We have been working with the unions, the joint union team, team of ministers chaired by the Honorable Cordel Hyde, the deputy prime minister. We have been able to achieve so much over the past three years and now we’re back to meeting with them again on other matters, critical matters. But yes, we did get through the 8.5 salary adjustment requests and we’re happy that we’re able to find a resolution on that. To be clear, government never said that the 8.5 was not something that the unions were going to get, I mean it was just how, or sorry the public officers were going to get, it was just how the implementation of that 8.5.”

The 8.5% salary cut, implemented in 2021 as part of the government’s austerity measures during the pandemic, is now being fully restored in a phased approach that includes both salary adjustments and retroactive payments.