WILLEMSTAD – The Curaçao government and five public-sector unions have reached agreements aimed at improving consultations on civil servant matters and addressing several long-standing issues, including indexation, salary structures, employee evaluations and pension reform.
The agreements were reached on August 26 between the Council of Ministers and the five unions represented in the Central Organized Consultation on Civil Servant Affairs (CGOA): ABVO, STRAF, SITEK, SAP and NAPB.
The parties agreed to hold technical discussions on the implementation of the National Ordinance on Organized Consultation in Civil Servant Affairs. The talks will take into account the principles established in International Labour Organization Convention No. 151, which concerns labor relations in the public service.
The government and unions have set a 30-day period to reach agreements intended to ensure the CGOA functions properly and effectively.
Another important part of the agreement concerns decisions and commitments made in previous negotiations that have either not been finalized or have not been fully implemented. The government and unions will jointly prepare an inventory of these outstanding agreements before determining how they should be addressed.
Particular attention will be given to agreements dating back to 2014. The parties have agreed that within three months they will develop a concrete plan establishing how and within what timeframe these commitments will finally be implemented.
Four major outstanding issues have been identified: indexation, remuneration and the salary structure, the employee evaluation system, and revision of the pension system.
The announcement could be significant for Curaçao's civil servants because several of these issues have remained subjects of negotiations and disagreements between successive governments and public-sector unions for years.
The new agreement does not mean that the outstanding 2014 commitments have already been implemented. Instead, the government and unions have committed themselves to developing a specific implementation plan within the three-month period.
Minister of Governance, Planning and Public Service Shalten Hato signed the agreement on behalf of the Curaçao government, while representatives of ABVO, NAPB, SAP, SITEK and STRAF signed on behalf of the Central Committee of Trade Unions.
According to the parties, the agreements reaffirm the importance of the CGOA as the formal consultation mechanism between the government and public-sector unions, with greater emphasis on ensuring that agreements are implemented in a structural, effective, transparent and verifiable manner.