The relationship between public employees and the leaders of government has been fractious since the employees’ demands for increased salaries and the restoration of a couple outstanding increments have not been addressed to their satisfaction. Recently, the BNTU rejected an offer from the government re their salaries and benefits; and the PSU, which did the same, warned the government to prepare for stern resistance if their demands aren’t met. Last week, employees of the KHMH held a small demonstration to express their continued displeasure with the government for their not addressing a long-standing issue involving the pensions of a number of nurses at the hospital. Undoubtedly, our security personnel, who like KHMH staff are Essential Services, so they ought not to go on strike, are in solidarity with their brothers and sisters in other departments in public employee ranks.
No economy in the world was spared from the ravages of the pandemic, and the massive inflation of the price of goods and services that followed. Quite a few public employees are among our top earners, and there are many two-income households whose earnings, when put together, insulates them from the present economic pressure. But there is a sizable number of Belizeans, both in the public and private sectors, that are barely holding on, that are one payday away from not being able to pay their bills.
In the teeth of the pandemic, employees of the government agreed to a pay cut and a freeze of increments to help tide us through the storm, on a promise that when the economy got better their salaries would be restored. Two years after the pandemic ended, Belize boasts the highest employment statistics ever, and has halved the debt to GDP ratio. Praise from the IMF is heaped on Belize’s economy and its managers, and foreign lenders from Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Taiwan have no problem providing us substantial development loans.
While the government has long ago made good on its promise to restore the salaries of its employees, (only a couple increments remain outstanding), many are on the ropes because of inflation which has effectively cut the value of our dollar in some instances by up to 30%. In 2025 plaantin noh di eat like rice; the salaries of many public employees are stretched past the limit, and they have been clamoring for a raise for some time. The Prime Minister has said he would like to double their salaries, but the country doesn’t have the money. As mentioned in the newspaper’s Tuesday editorial, a Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) US$125M grant Belize had received under the Biden administration fell through, and that has to have had a major impact on our economy.
In the first budget of his 2020-2025 government, 2021/2022, PM Briceño signaled “the urgent need for public pension reform.” He said noncontributory pension payment was near $100 million a year, from $38 million a year when the PUP was turned out of office in 2008. With Belize still in the grip of the pandemic, he swore to “preserve employment for 15,000 public servants”, and said that, while his administration resisted retrenchment, it would “protect the wages of those earning up to $12,000 per year” from a salary cut.
In his 2022/2023 budget, the Briceño government railed about the public wage bill. The PM said it was “stunning” that, “taken all together, wages and pensions, including the wage-related subsidies categorized as Subsidies and Transfers, will total some $704 million.” The PM said “62 cents of every dollar Government collects in recurrent revenues [was] spent on wages and pensions, [and after other government obligations] what remains for capital investments is $134 million, or 11 cents of every dollar collected.” He blamed UDP governments for the wage bill. He said when the PUP left office in 2008 “the wage bill was $234 million, [and when the party was] returned to office in 2020, that obligation was an astonishing $577 million, an increase of $343 million or 150 percent.”
Since taking office, the Briceño government has increased the emphasis on the private sector. Belize has seen BPO jobs increase from a few thousand to over 15,000 since the PUP took office in 2020. To protect business, the government that complained about the number of public employees has about doubled the ranks of the police. The Amandala reported on Tuesday that PSU president Dean Flowers shared that the PUP government of 2020-2025 had taken on over 3,000 new employees.
In 2021 the PUP government announced to the world that Belize is “Open for Business.” That’s BIG business. And the Briceño government has done more to promote small businesses than any government has before. The macro numbers look better than they ever have before, there is more employment than ever before, and the government has implemented a number of social justice initiatives that have bettered the lives of less well-off Belizeans. But inflation has seriously wounded the Belize dollar.
The PM has said he doesn’t believe that a recent tidy salary increase for his Cabinet Secretary and his government’s CEOs has anything to do with the rumbling from the ranks of public employees, who had been patient with the government, understanding of the government’s call to hold off on their demands for an upward revision of their salaries. But government’s employees digging in for the restoration of lost increments and a salary increase began in earnest after learning about the plums the top executives had received.
No one doubts that personnel in the Ministry of Finance are right wing. Most people who are pro-business lean to the right. The PUP won an overwhelming mandate on March 12, 2025, and the people don’t give such endorsements to political leaders who sit on their hands. The PUP won the prize, and the best the people have to give is accorded to the winners. It is the custom that the leaders and their friends get the best of the feast. But government’s employees, and many rank and file Belizeans too, feel the ones at the top are taking too much.
To date, the transparency and accountability we were promised in Plan Belize 2020-25 continues to elude us. The government’s perceived generosity with certain contracts, its failure to sufficiently address charges from the main Opposition that the NHI isn’t getting adequate oversight, have raised concerns that the right-wing arm of government might be gouging the pie. The PUP won an overwhelming mandate for what it achieved between 2020 and 2025; but this PUP, 2025-2030, is a second term government, and there is the suspicion that second term governments come for “theirs”.
And public employees, mainly the teachers and the public servants, have set their sights on what they say is rightfully theirs too. Traditionally, teachers are left leaning, but this strike is not about social justice. There have been no calls for the CEO group to reject their fat salaries increase, for a return to the status quo ante. On Tuesday the Amandala reported that the PSU president suggested that if government insists it cannot afford a payout for the entire public service, the increase should be awarded to union members only, because the other employees are “not asking them for nothing.”
The situation between the government and its employees apparently is at a stalemate. Today, there is the government on one side, and its employees on the other side. Belizeans pray for the best outcome, for the good of all of us.