Manual workers to vote on 3.2% pay rise

Saturday 11th October 2008, 9:56AM BST.

THE Island’s 1,500 States and parish manual workers have been offered a pay increase of 3.2%.

With inflation at the end of June running at 5.6% the chances of acceptance would appear to be low. The public sector workers are to vote on the 3.2% offer, equivalent to the retail prices index at the end of March.

The regional official of the union that represents the workers said that they agreed to put the offer to the workforce by way of a ballot in accordance with the terms of the Employment Law.

Nick Corbel, of the Unite Union (pictured), said that the States had originally wanted to negotiate on a different indicator of cost of living, known as the RPI(Y), which had not been acceptable to the staff side representatives. That index leaves out both the cost of housing and indirect taxes such as GST and duty rises.

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