Christmas bonus cut in half!

Dec 11, 2016 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

There is no legal obligation on the part of the government to pay a Christmas bonus to public servants. A bonus is not part of any contractual arrangement between the government and its employees
There was no precedent, prior to last year, for the payment of such a bonus. What the PPPC used to pay at Christmas time was back pay- retroactive salary increases to January.
The APNU+AFC government decided to play smart during its first Budget and only offered retroactive increases for half of the year instead of the full year. As such, it came under pressure to do something for the workers for Christmas and was forced to make a one-off bonus payment.
The government should never have started that practice. Once you start something people will come to expect it each year. They will budget for it. Governments however cannot budget for bonuses. Once you start paying a bonus and you cannot sustain it or continue it at the same level that you used to, people will become annoyed. The government will lose support.
Bonuses are discretionary sums which are paid by bosses. They are therefore suited for the private sector, not the public sector. Performance-based increments should have been paid instead. But since there are no performance–based appraisal systems within the public service, this cannot be done, and even if it could have been done, it is a highly controversial process which creates its own problems for government.
The government this year has paid a $25,000 bonus to all workers earning below $500,000. This means that everybody gets the same. There is no equity here. The boss and the sweeper get the same amount, just like last year. People are not comfortable with such a system which does not recognize rank.
Worst of all, the workers are being paid half of what they got last year. They would have planned for a $50,000 or more. Now all they will get is half of that amount. This is going to spoil a lot of people’s Christmas.
Also, the government is not paying the army, police or prison service the usual one month salary which the PPP used to pay to these entities. The one-off bonus last year did help to diffuse some of the anger felt over this withdrawal of a facility which the Disciplined Services had come to expect each year end under the PPPC.
Government has the money to pay a bigger Christmas bonus. It is not as if revenues were lower this year than last year. It is also a fact that the government is not going to spend, this year, all the money that it is supposed to be spending. The money can be found to pay a bigger bonus. But the government does not wish to start something that it cannot continue. It therefore should never have started the practice of paying Christmas bonuses to public servants.
People are going to be annoyed at the cutting of the bonus this year in half. This will affect workers’ productivity for the rest of the year, not that that matters much, since Guyanese public servants are not known for working very hard as the year winds down.

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