ROSEAU, Dominica, CMC – Public servants have voted to take industrial action after rejecting a two per cent salary increase from the Dominica government.

The civil servants took their decision during  a meeting with their union – the Dominica Public Service Union (PSU) – on Tuesday after discussing the latest offer from the Roosevelt Skerrit administration.

“What we have been saying all along has been repeated or endorsed by the members and that is that the PSU cannot and will not accept the salary increase being proposed by the Government of Dominica,” PSU general secretary Thomas Letang told reporters.

The union had requested a 19 per cent salary increase over a three-year period and according to Letang, the union had, during the negotiations, tried hard to impress on government the need to make an increased salary offer.

While he would not disclose the specific industrial action to be taken by the workers, Letang said they would send government a strong message at the appropriate time.

“The way forward is that at the right time we will indicate to government our displeasure. We will indicate to government our dissatisfaction and we will move from there,” Letang said, hinting at a possible sick-out ahead of the December 18 general elections.

Letang warned that if “people are dissatisfied with something, at some point, they will show their dissatisfaction. Public Officers know exactly what they are supposed to do, whether they will be on the job or not.

Earlier this week, the union gave a guarded response to a statement by Prime Minister Skerrit that if his ruling Dominica Labour Party (DLP) is re-elected to office on Friday, it would increase the minimum salary of public servants and that nurses and teachers would also benefit from policies to be implemented during the first 100 days of his new administration taking up office.

Skerrit, addressing supporters at a rally of the ruling party over the last weekend, said that his administration would also regularise the minimum pay so that all full term employees receive no less than EC$1000 (US$370) per month.

Skerrit said that a DLP government would also create 100 positions for nurses and will seek to improve the lot of the island’s teachers.

But letang, who led his union into talks with the government on Monday, said if the new measures outlined by Prime Minister Skerrit were agreed upon during the negotiations it would show that his statements at the DLP rally were not “just pronouncements that are thrown in the air but it is something the government is serious about”.