It is unfortunate that the labor unions of public employees are bitching and moaning while they are the highest paid and cannot get fired, while our private sector labor force has to deal with less income or look for another job, all without protesting.
It seems to me that the public sector labor unions play their game to obstruct any attempt at lowering our public wage bill. They do that by squeezing political soft spots.
Politicians are not used to making any hard decisions and then be responsible for them.
Business owners, on the other hand, are used to making these.
So it is hard on the politicians is charge of our country to all of a sudden crack down on expenses the way the private sector does.
Setting the bar of profit higher and reaching better results with less people and less resources is a way of life in the private sector.
Hard targets and cost reducing measures are not even up for discussion in the public sector.
But at the end Aruba is a market economy, and the monopolistic public employer will have to confront market forces, meaning no hay plaka, and will be forced to make decisions, albeit more slowly and much less efficiently than the private sector and in the process make GOA more effective.
A lawyer friend, supporting the Labor Unions explains that GOA made a unilateral decision to lower wages until the end of December 2020 and they wished arbitrarily to continue with these reductions, forever.
Look at the Landspakket, she says, the reductions are not temporary, they are forever, or at least seven years. And in the case of some state owned companies, their company is doing well, why do they have to tighten the belt, what do they care if GOA is cash starved?
In 2020, GOA pretended to conduct a dialogue, they gave dialogue up in 2021.
The Labor Unions are of the opinion that nothing unilateral holds and that GOA must take COST-REDUCING measures first, before they touch workers. I can’t say that they are wrong.
