Mark Beckford, Staff Reporter

Labour Minister Pearnel Charles was last night hammering out a back-to-work formula with representatives of the Jamaica Public Service (JPS) management and unionised employees.

Charles moved with lightning speed yesterday to neutralise the charged industrial climate at the power supplier, which threatened to spark a full-scale power outage. The meeting followed industrial action by some of the utility company's employees.

NWU spokesman Clive Dobson told The Sunday Gleaner last night that the JPS agreed to reinstate the consultants involved in a job evaluation and compensation-review project, whose termination by the company triggered yesterday's industrial action.

"Under the chairmanship of the minister of labour, we have decided on a timetable which will carry us through until the matter is resolved. We will be meeting with the oversight committee which has authority to conclude the matter," said Dobson.

"The consultants have been reinstated immediately with no conditions."

Talks between the parties will resume at Jamaica House today and continue at the Ministry of Labour for the rest of the week, he said.

Power outages

The strike caused 50,000 residents in parts of St Catherine, St James, Clarendon and St Ann to experience power outages yesterday. Following a ruling by the Industrial Disputes Tribunal (IDT) in 2003 that the JPS should pay employees increased emoluments, consultants Trevor Hamilton and Associates and FocalPoint Consulting were hired by the JPS to determine amounts due to individual JPS employees for the period 2001-2007 under the reclassification exercise.

These increases arose from a job evaluation and compensation-review exercise which aimed to bring the pay scale of JPS employees in line with their counterparts in the market.

In a press statement yesterday, the JPS said it took the decision to dismiss the consultants because the company had lost confidence in the consultants' work. According to the statement, the JPS had begun to make provisions for the payment of approximately $2 billion to employees, in line with the original calculations by the consultants submitted to them in a report in November 2007.

Revised figures

The statement went on to say that on April 22, the consultants presented the JPS with revised figures representing an increase of close to 100 per cent over the original calculations.

"In light of the almost doubling of the original figures presented, and in the absence of an acceptable explanation of the variance, the company's management has lost confidence in the consultants' ability to deliver a fair, comprehensive and transparent product in keeping with the IDT ruling," said Damian Obiglio, president and chief executive officer of the JPS, in the statement.

Obiglio questioned the consultants' recommended increased payments two weeks before the scheduled disbursement and said the revised figures could have implications for JPS customers.

"The payments to be made will have significant implications for all stakeholders - employees, shareholders, as well as customers - who will ultimately be required to pay the additional costs in their electricity rates."

Yesterday, workers at the JPS Old Harbour Bay power station, who blocked the entrance to the facility, told The Sunday Gleaner that they were upset about the company's dismissal of the court-appointed consultants. The workers, who were in a restive mood, claimed that persons who should have completed their shifts at 6 a.m. had been unable to do so, because they had not been relieved.

Additional reporting by Correspondent Rasbert Turner.