Dear Editor,
There have been a couple of letter writers who have got the right idea about the unions that represent them, that is, they are getting angry at the way the unions conduct their business without speaking to or balloting them first.
My advice is whatever you do, you do not want to start feeding in big “headline-grabbing” pay awards into Commerce and Industry as this will need to come from somewhere ie. your taxes.
Small incremental pay awards will not necessarily affect prices; but big pay awards normally do affect prices.
The whole idea is to prevent inflation as this will mean less monies for workers.
The main problem is not a wage/poor issue, it is the value of the Guyana dollar. With the high remittances plus exports outpacing imports and with the reduction in foreign debt financing the Guyana dollar should be trading at about G$170:US$1.
So a small incremental increase from G$204:US$1 to G$200:US$1 (a 2% increase) would not “break-the-bank”). We are not pushing up the value of the G$; it is just that we are not tracking the slide in the US$.
Yours faithfully,
Sean Brignandan
