OUR disclosures that the Public Sector Remuneration Committee’s chief negotiator is today back behind his desk after more than nine weeks’ suspension inevitably raises questions about the way the States treats its employees – and taxpayers’ cash.

That no disciplinary action has been taken against him indicates most strongly that he has done nothing wrong and that any investigatory process has exonerated him of whatever he may have been accused of.

In turn, that must pose further questions about the judgement of the manager who decided to suspend him and the executive higher up the chain who ratified that decision, apparently without any justification.

And having taken seemingly unwarranted action against a man with decades of service to the States of Guernsey, from what is leaking out of Frossard House, absolutely no arrangements had been made to manage his return to work after many weeks’ absence.

Unacceptable behaviour though that may be from the island’s biggest employer, the concerns go far deeper.

Successive reports have questioned the way government acts as an employer and the airport firefighters tribunal is expected to touch on some of these matters as well.

More fundamentally, the chief negotiator and his deputy were deliberately excluded from the process that has led to the airport firefighters receiving a precedent-setting pay rise of 18%.

Why? Because the two men could see no justification for it and all their years of experience cried out against a settlement that will add an estimated £200,000 a year to the airport fire service payroll?

The political head of the PSRC won’t comment because he says this is a civil service matter, but that public hand-washing really will not do.

If two highly experienced and paid officers can safely be excluded from their PSRC day jobs, then is that not the same as saying they are redundant? And what does this do to their status and standing when they next look employee groups in the eye and try to hold the government line of costs rising at or below RPI?

Regardless of what happened to trigger the suspension, the consequences of the way it has been managed are very grave.