The 1999 strike, organized by the Guyana Public Service Union (GPSU), ended with a move to arbitration, which saw public servants being awarded large pay increases – 31.6% for 1999 and 26.6% for 2000.
The nurses’ strike in 1991 and the general one-day strike in 1992 seemed to have set the stage and gave the union the impetus it needed to embark on the 1999 action.
Government had offered a 4.6% increase to public servants; the union had asked for 40% for its members. Government’s stonewalling after endless meetings and attempts at negotiation, resulted in the massive strike which went on for close to two months and which had a crippling effect on some government ministries, state bodies and the private sector.
“We wanted 40 per cent for 1999 and 50 per cent for 2000 and we kept pressing for this,” GPSU President Patrick Yarde told Stabroek News in an interview. “Frustration led us to issue an ultimatum, but when we did this we got feedback that they wanted us to strike because they felt that in two weeks they would be able to break the union. But within our ranks, members were anxious to go on strike.”
Yarde said that when the PPP took office in 1992, the union had met then finance minister Asgar Ally to put its concerns on the table. He said he asked that the government treat with priority, the long-outstanding issues like improved working environment and conditions and also to pay salary increases.
“We felt it was fair to meet with the new government and lay on the table our concerns… [but] we felt they didn’t take us seriously. These discussions culminated in an ultimatum in 1993 which resulted in an agreement we felt was very good,” Yarde recollected.
According to him, that agreement addressed reasonable pay and gave a commitment to do a series of things. One was to have a wages policy negotiated with the government and “we entered into that agreement in good faith and we felt very satisfied and were prepared to sit with government to deal with these issues but they were not serious.”
This resulted in the 1994 eleven-day strike, which coincided with the Caribbean Commissioners of Police meeting that was being held here. Following this action another agreement was entered into, which Yarde said was an improvement on the last one. An annual inflation assessment was agreed to, which would have dictated rises in salaries as well as a minimum wage.
“But the only thing that was paid was the increase in salary and the members felt deceived again but we asked them to bear with us while we tried other means [rather than taking to the streets],” he explained.
The years 1995 and 1996 were filled with debates and negotiations between the two sides and at one meeting which involved then president Cheddi Jagan, a decision was made to set up a bipartite committee to investigate government finances and see how best the situation could be improved.
According to Yarde, Jagan gave a directive that everyone co-operate with the committee, which was headed by Shaik Baksh, who is now the Minister of Education.
An agreement was reached and a recommendation arrived at, but Dr Jagan died in March 1997 before the committee completed its work, Yarde said, and its members from the government side were unwilling to stick to the recommendation made.
“We always felt that there were elements within the ranks that were resisting improving conditions for workers. So the report was undermined and recommendations were not honoured inasmuch as funds were there and a whole series of politics started to play out,” he added.
Yarde said the greatest disappointment was when he called on Baksh and Gobind Ganga who was also on the committee, to join in defending and representing the report and they were reluctant.
But the straw that broke the camel’s back, Yarde said, was when the union learnt that a commitment was made by government at the level of the International Monetary Fund to pay public sector workers a mere three per cent increase for ten years. “This was it for us because this action spelt deceit,” he said.
Confront it
It was at this point, Yarde said, that the union decided that the only way to deal with the matter was to confront it. He said they started to mobilize for industrial action.
“We knew that we must take our case to the people because the public would suffer based on what would be necessary…,” Yarde said. “Like withdrawing public services; everyone would be affected …whole national life [would be] disrupted. So we wanted to let them know what efforts we were making and the agreements which we had that were legal and binding and that it was not an overnight decision.
“We had to show labour power and the implications. We were very concerned that innocents would have had to suffer and in essence become victims. So we held public meetings throughout the country… politicians and members of civil society supported our cause.”
Yarde said he felt the economy was doing well and the government was in a position to award the 40% since the economy was buoyant and there was a more contented population.
He said the plan was for the strike to start on Tuesday, May 4, but it started on April 30 and lasted a total of 57 days.
The Georgetown Public Hospital, the Customs and Excise Department, several government ministries, the Inland Revenue Department, the Lands and Surveys Department were all affected and in some hospitals in other parts of the country, staff were working to rule, while others were on go-slow.
However the wharves, the airport and the public hospital were the hardest hit. Other agencies also joined the strike action after their unions declared solidarity with the GPSU. The Postal and Telecommunication Workers Union (PTWU) was one such union resulting in postal workers joining the marches. The majority of letter carriers were off the job and bomb scares were prevalent everywhere.
In her May Day (1999) address, President Janet Jagan had said that the government could not afford to pay big increases but signalled the need to work out medium and long-term solutions to the problem. Dr Henry Jeffrey who was labour minister at the time had said in his May Day message that it was heartening that “all sides accepted that public service wages are too low”. He said he was sure that an amicable solution could have been reached, while noting that there was also broad agreement that proper comparability of wages could not be achieved in one stroke and must include efforts at rationalization.
Negotiations
There were calls from many circles for the union and government to return to the bargaining table. President Bharrat Jagdeo, who was finance minister at the time, called the union’s demands unrealistic saying that 90% of state revenues were going to public servants and to service the country’s debt. Jagdeo was quoted by the then Guyana Information Services (GIS) as saying that 3,000 to 4,000 persons in the public service were not needed citing this as a significant part of the reason for wages being at the level they were.
On day five of the strike, Prime Minister Samuel Hinds had written to then general secretary of the Guyana Trades Union Congress (GTUC) Lincoln Lewis proposing talks. Discussions followed as the government and the union worked towards returning to the negotiating table. A cabinet sub-committee was established to reopen talks with the union and PM Hinds wrote to the union when the strike was nine days old, but Yarde was adamant that Jagdeo must provide information on the state of the economy.
On May 11, the union replied to Hinds signalling its willingness to resume wage talks after it was assured by government that the discussions were initiated without any prejudice to the demand for arbitration.
“We interpret this development to mean that government has set aside its previous untenable 4.6 per cent pay increase offer and is now prepared to apply itself to addressing in a more realistic manner the workers’ legitimate demands at the negotiating table,” the union had said in a statement in which it announced that it was willing to resume talks.
Following the second round of talks, the union tabled a pay increase formula, which also included a proposal for government to use a portion of the $4 billion surplus under local financing in the 1999 budget to put in place a programme to increase revenue at Customs and other areas to be fully supported by the public service and private sector.
It also called for government to:
Examine areas in the current budget that could result in savings to finance the pay hike.
Use the Highly Indebted and Poor Countries (HIPC) funds to support the wage and salary increases to education and health personnel as they are critical for the improvement of these sectors.
Use the Consolidated Fund balances that are available in the central bank – as was done in 1998.
The union believed that the wages and salary increases would stimulate the economy, increase purchasing power and enhance incomes of businesses and farmers.
But even though it acknowledged the proposals, government continued to maintain that it was offering the public servants what it could have afforded.
At the same time too, the union was demanding the current status of the Final Document on the Initiative for HIPC dated December 5, 1997. According to Yarde, this information was necessary since a letter from the World Bank to him had indicated that fewer resources under HIPC were to be allotted for civil service reform.
While all of this was happening, the strike continued and intensified in some instances and later saw calls from the private sector for the issues to be settled.
Could have been done differently
Looking back now, Yarde told Stabroek News, he has no regrets about the strike. However, he feels that many things could have been done differently. Foremost among these is a belief that the strike could have been plumbed further so that the union could have wangled tighter agreements.
“Also, the accommodation that we gave this government, we should not have done it and we should have placed more emphasis on synchronizing with our membership in general,” he said. “There were good members, committed to the struggle but there was lots of mischief playing out within the ranks of the membership and we should have treated with it more effectively.”
There were rumours which spread throughout the country that Yarde had gone ahead and signed an agreement with government unknown to his membership.
He told Stabroek News that he too had heard the rumour.
When the agreement was in fact signed, it was general secretary at the time Lawrence Mentis who did it and not Yarde.
In hindsight, Yarde conceded that the final agreement could have been more explicit. “There were deficiencies… I would have dotted the Is and crossed the Ts,” he said.
The government was practically forced to go to arbitration having adamantly refused to earlier, he said. Dr Aubrey Armstrong chaired the panel which awarded 31.6% to the workers for 999 and 26.6% for 2000.
Yarde acknowledged that damage was done to some extent and doubts created in the membership and that this was exploited by some.
“We should have been much more proactive in explaining to members what we did…,” he told Stabroek News. “Even up to today we have to speak so many times for people to understand how successful this strike was. It was the best achievement for me as president. I really could not comprehend why so many could not understand the merits and benefits of it.”
He explained that the union was on strike for 57 days and to resume duty it demanded a 25% interim increase. Workers also received a ‘loan salary’ for the days they were on strike, which they had to pay back over seven months.
For years now the GPSU has been faced with imposition of government-announced pay hikes for public servants. Asked why no action on this, Yarde said: “A simple research will answer. I myself live in it. There was a lot of disenchantment after the strike. A major problem was [that] there were members who felt that the best solution to the problem was a change of government. They felt that the government was a rude government and they would never honour an agreement…. The members did not trust the government and even though my position was no different I was prepared to take that chance to seek a solution consistent with the agreement.”
Yarde said while the salaries were paid other fundamentals in the agreement were not heeded to, which later led to an increase in migration from the country.
“The government cut out our check-off system… went to a higher level of ruthlessness and many members were threatened that if they continued to be members of GPSU there would be negative consequences. We were fighting the government, police, judiciary, DPP,” he continued.
He said too that the union found itself standing alone to defend workers’ rights. He said members started to feel that they were being used and so were no longer prepared to make those kinds of sacrifices.
“Many have since backed out,” he added but noted that he was proud of those who have remained in the membership. He said the union’s membership has significantly declined because the government has refused to deduct monies from several agencies.
Notwithstanding the pressures the union faces, Yarde boasted that no other union performs better that the GPSU.
Not political
Jeffrey who was labour minister at the time told Stabroek News that he does not think that the strike was politically motivated; just the unions taking advantage of an opportunity they thought they had.
In terms of rating its success, Jeffrey said over the two years the union managed to cop reasonable increases but according to him these could only be termed short-term benefits.
In the longer term, he said, he felt the strike gave the union no other opportunity to carry out that type of protest again.
“The government and the union never got on since and for years the union has always had quarrels with the government,” Jeffrey said. “For the most part, the union faced a government more resolved to deal with it. The result is that the union lost a lot of financial resources.”
Jeffrey told Stabroek News that the 1999 public service strike did not do well for future industrial relations climate in Guyana, since in nominal terms, public sector wages have fallen.
When asked what he felt the government could have done differently, Jeffrey told this newspaper that it could have decided earlier that it would go to arbitration since there were times when the union had seemed wiling to accept less than what it was initially demanding.
“I suppose the lesson I learnt is that if you are going to have discourses with international organisations, you have to have a more collaborative approach with unions, you can’t go alone,” he said. “When you are finished you still have to face unions, private sector etc. It’s better to have a more in-depth collaborative approach to the process and let everyone know what the benchmarks are and where things are going.”
Jeffrey said he felt that what was required then and still is needed now, is some kind of collaborative stakeholder approach to these matters.
“The country is poor… not that it can offer a lot but when it appears that some are being offered and others are not, it will give rise to all sorts of suspicions and demands… no amount of talking and statistics would help that. It has to happen at the level of policy and collaboration,” he said.
But he noted that industrial conflicts are inevitable.
A senior medical official who worked at the GPH and who was at the forefront of the action told Stabroek News that nothing much was attained for nurses during their strike in 1991.
She recounted intimidation and threats being meted out to them as the government sought to get its way. “The intimidation is what I believe resulted in many nurses leaving this country after then. Because it didn’t pay off… we didn’t get what we fought for,” she said.
She said there were no issues with mobilization since nurses were part of the struggle. However when asked about future strike action, she said she was sure the response would not be like it was in the past.
“If they call a strike now workers will not go out,” she said. “Unions are cash- strapped and they are supposed to subsidize when workers are not being paid due to their action. Right now they don’t have the kind of money to support any such action.”
Current President of the GTUC Gillian Burton also expressed the belief that such industrial action may not be possible again. She opined that in those days workers were more militant and had a lot of belief and faith in unions and trusted their leadership.
She added that what has influenced there being no more industrial action was the way in which workers were intimidated by the government and its arms. “The government used bullyism. The fact that they used violence and the fact that they were shot at (the incident at the wharf during the strike) drove fear into workers, which is still pretty much alive in public sector employees,” she said.
Last year the government imposed a six per cent across-the-board increase for public servants, without real negotiations with the GPSU, which had been calling for at least 12 per cent for workers.
