JTA ancillary staff picket Church Street HQ over unpaid increments since 2017

While the Jamaica Teachers’ Association continues to press the Government for better pay for educators, the union now faces a separate wage fight with its own employees.

On Monday, dozens of staff turned out in black, carrying placards outside the JTA’s Church Street headquarters in downtown Kingston. They told reporters their grievance stretches back roughly nine years.

The Bustamante Industrial Trade Union, which speaks for security, ancillary, accounting, and clerical workers at the association, put the dispute in writing through Vice-President Rudolph Thomas. In a release, Thomas said the row started because the JTA has not supplied a clear breakdown of how incremental and seniority increases were worked out from 2017 onward.

The union has flagged multiple inconsistencies in those figures and has repeatedly asked for answers.

Thomas warned that conditions have grown worse. Management, he said, has still not wrapped up wage and fringe-benefit talks for the lapsed 2024–2026 period, and has been slow to sit with the union on a market realignment that should have taken effect in 2024.

Members, the release added, are tired of what the BITU calls foot-dragging that breaks prior agreements and amounts to denying fair pay for work already done.

Thomas said the protest could intensify unless JTA leadership meets the union at once and sets firm dates to settle the matters. He also charged that several undertakings made before the Ministry of Labour have not been honoured.