Antigua teachers receive overdue pay following industrial action

Public school teachers in Antigua on Friday resumed classes after days of industrial action over outstanding retroactive pay.

On Friday morning the Antigua-Barbuda Union of Teachers (ABUT) announced that classes would return to normalcy with immediate effect. “I am happy to report that we got the final set of cheques this morning,” said the union’s General Secretary Sharon Kelsick. The union heads called an emergency meeting that morning to move a motion to restart classes after all teachers received outstanding monies.

Negotiations were underway for some time over long requested reclassification of salaries that would increase the pay for over 300 teachers. But the payments and upgrades, due for the period 2019 to 2024, to just a handful of remaining educators went unpaid. With this the teachers launched sit-ins, impacting the start of school for hundreds of students.