Dear Editor,

“The trade union movement is dying,” said the GTUC President at last the May Day celebration, according to Stabroek News of May 2. Nowhere was the veracity of this statement more evident than in the mining town of Linden May 1 gone. This town, once the bulwark of trade union militancy and workers’ solidarity mainly through the Guyana Mine Workers Union and the Guyana Bauxite Workers Union when there used to be a mighty bauxite company that employed some 5000 workers instead of a little over 300 now, was silent as a grave.

Not a word on the question of labour was addressed. Editor, last May Day I penned a letter under the heading, ‘Labour movement in the Linden bauxite community is in a state of paralysis’ in which I stated, “It was one of the most dismal showings ever – most shameful coming from a community that once stood out as having the most radical and militant work force… that once locked horns with the establishment and rocked their foundation… Since the advent of the extension of the Town Day event to a Town Week, the Labour Day celebration has been coinciding with it… [and] has contributed to diminishing its significance.”

This year there was no need to bemoan a poor turn-out (25-30 workers) for there were none! Nothing took place; no march, no placards, and the only two unions that came out to mark this historic occasion in their own small way were the Postal and Telecommunications Workers Union and a handful of workers from the Linden Hospital Complex, both at their respective locations. As mentioned above about the Town Week activities and May Day coinciding, adjustment should have been made to cherish and perpetuate this international historic event. Instead union leaders have neglected to address this issue. There are a host of things affecting Linden that need to be dealt with; the town is now 40 years old and labour is in sad shape. And while some sit and talk of grand plans and dreams, with high hopes and optimism about a wide range of investments and the glorious future that awaits the town, we cannot blind our eyes from what we are presently saddled with, pretending it does not exist. In the meantime while we wait, remember one has got to keep in good shape to greet the future and take advantage of it.

If we choose to relegate labour to nothingness, rest assured that we will be equally so treated. Labour is the foundation upon which humanity and our civilization are built; that’s the way it has always been and will always be. And that is why the GTUC top bosses need to shift gear. They cannot sit and shout from the capital city only; they need to see to it that the movement is organized throughout the land.

But coming back to the GTUC President’s remarks about the labour movement dying, after what I saw in Linden on Labour Day, I was not in the least surprised. The writing has been on the wall for some time now. How could the TUC not see it, because the way things are going it is easy to see the phasing out of unions. What took place in Linden is slowly but surely spreading to other regions and will in like manner strangle them. President Burton is seeing right – dead on target – the movement is dying. Young people are not labour conscious; labour doesn’t appeal to them or respect them and they respond in like manner. They are in a different time zone, with unemployment and piecemeal jobs and an inadequate minimum wage, not to mention the substantial number who do not receive wages anywhere near the so-called minimum wage and who are not entitled to any sort of fringe benefits bargained for by unions for their members. All these and more, struggle to survive which makes it so ironic yet understandable that young people do not fuss about or cling to the labour movement, through which their well-being ought to be enhanced.

And this is why the TUC will have the devil’s job in its effort to keep the movement alive; respective union leaders will have to take the initiative, be bold and innovative and find creative ways to pique their members’ interest. They must be seen beyond a doubt as working in their best interest. If they are perceived by workers as being caught up with their own hustle, workers will not only dismiss them with scorn as selling out, but even as endangering their livelihoods.

Young people have consciously or unconsciously deunionized themselves, because for a long time now unions have lost their vibrancy. It seems as if all the grand courage, the sting, the fighting zeal were spent during the reign of Burnham’s PNC, and the new young workers have inherited an exhausted, cold and feckless trade union movement that is not only in a state of paralysis but rather is a necrotic body. This is a serious question for the GTUC: when labour is seen as having lost its significance and dignity, then ‘all gone’? This is the challenge facing the TUC which must be urgently corrected; they have got to take the bull by the horns or else there will be a requiem for it in the not too distant future.

Yours faithfully,
Frank Fyffe