Governor Albert Bryan on Mon. Jan. 24, 2022 Delivered his final State of the Territory Address ahead of his reelection bid.
Who's undergirding the government so that government employees could have great health insurance and a solid pension? Private sector workers, says Governor Albert in a forthright quote Tuesday while addressing nurses.
Nurses have held several protests recently with the hope that their requests will be addressed, among them a contract, better compensation and better equipment to work with.
Mr. Bryan said while his administration would ensure compensation for nurses and others, government employees in the Virgin Islands do well because of private sector workers paying their taxes.
“The one thing I have told every government employee, the people in the community is who pays the taxes for us to pay our salaries, and we make more than them, we get better retirement systems than them, better health insurance than them. So this community's private sector and the like actually make sacrifices so that government employees can have their services,” Mr. Bryan said Tuesday during his administration's weekly press briefing.
“Most of the time we have better service, we have probably one of the best insurance plans in the country, one of the best retirement plans in the country. So when you see all of that you have to recognize that we pay what our community can afford,” he said, adding that 30 percent of the people in the territory live below the poverty line.
“So we do well for what our community can afford. We would love to pay people more; we always want to do but we could only pay what we could afford,” Mr. Bryan continued while pointing out that the delay in union negotiations for nurses wage increases was due to Covid-19.
“We could not get out and do things the way we wanted but trust me, traditionally people try to get it all in an election year because they know or think that by November if it does not happen it's not going to happen again. My word is my word. We are going to get all the government employees to get paid a fair wage — as fair as we can determine,” he promised.
Advertisements
