The Mayor and City Council has brought some of its old debt over to this year and some of its workers are still to receive part of what was to have been a one-off year-end payment, while some have not yet received any money.
The workers will decide today whether they will take strike action again and this time, according to Guyana Labour Union (GLU) General Secretary Carvil Duncan, “if this decision is made we will walk for a very long time.”
At a press conference yesterday Duncan said it was now up to the workers to decide what their next step would be.
He said the union felt the council was in a better position to pay the workers all the money due to them since it was able to acquire an advance in taxes for the first quarter of this year from the government.
But he charged that there was discrimination in the payment since the workers he represents were made to settle for half of the one-off payment, which some of them still have not received, while those workers represented by the Guyana Local Govern-ment Officers Union (GLGOU) have received all of their promised five per cent increase.
Contacted for a comment yesterday, Mayor Hamilton Green told Stabroek News that the money was shared equally between the workers represented by both unions and offered that Duncan’s statements might be part of a political campaign but said he had nothing else to say on the issue.
Duncan told the media that the union and the council’s Treasury Department were informed simultaneously by the Ministry of Finance on December 21 that the advance payment from the government was available on that date. “My union, being interested in ensuring that the workers were paid, sent three representatives to the Treasury Department of the M&CC to ensure that the cheque was collected, but it was not until the next day that the cheque was uplifted,” Duncan said.
He said workers were not paid before Christmas and when an enquiry was made on December 27, the Treasury Department had said that everything was ready for the payments to be made but it was “under instruction to hold” until further orders. “I later learnt that the Mayor, Town Clerk and the Treasurer were in caucus and they decided that the President cannot instruct them on how the money should be spent and as a result the decision was made that the workers shall only have a part and a part shall be used for the payment of contractors,” Duncan said.
According to him, the senior officers of the council agreed to pay themselves a five per cent increase for 2006 and they met and endorsed the recommendation, making it a council decision.
After this, Duncan said, Town Clerk (ag) Yonnette Pluck wrote to the union and advised that a council decision was made to pay 50% of the one-month pay-off and the remainder would be paid on or before January 1, 2007.
The GLU said that workers paid through the bank received far less than 50% of the one-month payment and a large number of them had not yet been paid as of yesterday.
Meanwhile, the union is also aggravated that five days’ pay was deducted from their members’ salaries for the days they were on strike. “But for the one day that the workers represented by the GLGOU [were off the job], no deductions were made from their December salaries,” Duncan asserted, causing him to conclude that there is discrimination in the treatment being meted out to the two unions representing the different levels of workers.
An article carried in the January 1 edition of this newspaper under ‘City council Round-up’, quoted PNCR Councillor Oscar Clarke as saying “it would be illegal and immoral for the council to pay these workers.”
Workers’ plight
Representing the voices of his fellow colleagues, municipality worker Aubrey Charles yesterday told members of the media that he felt the workers who went on strike last year did so for a just cause and it should not be looked at as anything political. He said Mayor Green met them and ridiculed them and brought up many irrelevant issues.
The union was also forced just before year end to write to Pluck and advise that council cancel a contract it signed with Cevon’s Waste Manage-ment Services after the clerk of markets allegedly informed workers attached to the Bourda Market that their jobs had become redundant.
Yesterday Duncan said he regarded the contract with Cevon’s as invalid until such time as the council acknowledged that it was in breach of Section 23 of the termination of employment and severance pay act which states that prior to terminating for redundancy, the employer shall inform as early as possible but no later than one month from the day of the existence of the need for redundancy, the recognized union and the chief labour officer.
Chief Labour Officer Mohammed Akeel had also written to Pluck and requested that the decision to make the employees redundant be put on hold and that she comply with the law. According to Duncan, to date Pluck has not responded to his letter and he is now challenging her capacity to carry out the duties assigned to her. “It is our intention to pursue this matter vigorously
