The Guyana Postal and Telecommunication Workers’ Union (GPTWU) and GT&T are at loggerheads over the sharing of financial records and the company says it is flabbergasted over a 45% wage hike demand from the union.
The union yesterday issued a statement in which it charged that the company has been “reluctant to provide the union upon request, with the notes of the accounts for the financial year ending December 31, 2009.”
It added that GT&T has also withheld “vital data” on its membership, which it hoped would have propelled the negotiations process. This formation, it said, relates to a list of persons within the bargaining unit, their years of service and positions on the salary scale.
“The GPTWU is the sole and exclusive bargaining agent for the employees of the company in the A10-50 salary scales and believes very strongly that its request for the information is not unreasonable. It is the union’s belief that, if we are to negotiate in “good faith,” then management must provide upon request the relevant pertinent documents,” the union stated.
The GPTWU noted that it had written the Chief Labour Officer requesting conciliation and a meeting was held with the parties and the company maintained its position of non-disclosure.
However, at a hastily called news briefing yesterday GT&T’s CEO Yog Mahadeo declared that it was “totally untrue” that the company refuses to share relevant financial data with the union. “Before negotiations with the union we basically give them a print of the financial statement and the signed audited opinion,” he said.
However, when Stabroek News pointed out to Mahadeo afterwards that the union was asking for the “notes of the accounts” he said the company failed to see the relevance of the 2009 notes to the present negotiations when the union was in receipt of the audited statements.
As it relates to the request for employee records, the CEO said the company’s position is that that information is private and such a request could only be honoured with the approval of the workers. “I personally addressed that by saying that I feel my employees’ trust in me would be breached if I were to release their personal information. However, I never said no to the union; I said if you were to go and get your members to explicitly instruct me to release their personal information I would consider that obligation,” he explained.
However, he noted that they have always negotiated across-the-board increases so he was at a loss to see how the personal information could be relevant.
The GPTWU in its release stated that GT&T has qualified employees who are “highly skilled, technically sound and long serving but work for minimal financial rewards.” It also expressed concern about “a high influx of temporary staff” that was being employed in permanent positions and called on the company to have them function in permanent positions.
Addressing the latter, Mahadeo said he saw no problem with employing temporary staff since they were being used to take up the slack for permanent staff who may be undergoing training in new technologies or placed in emerging areas in the process to transform the company. “You will find that there are certain areas that until we decide how these areas are gonna be shaped, formed and sealed basically. You can’t decide how you’re gonna build permanent staff in those areas,” he said.
Meanwhile, the GT&T head said he was surprised at the union’s demand for a 45% wages and salaries increase. “We shared with the union our financial position… and I was flabbergasted when a demand came for 45% increase. When the union asked for 2009 financial performance and they looked at 2009 and 2008 and 2007 and then they’re going to ask you for 45% increase for the future looking at past performance, I don’t know how you can bring those two together because something is really wrong with that picture,” he stated.
According to Mahadeo, projections have to be taken into account when speaking about future commitments and while the union had sought an “extremely high increase,” GT&T had moved along the scale of what it was prepared to offer while the union’s position remained fixed. He said the company’s starting offer had been in the single digits but he declined to say how much the company was prepared to offer since the negotiations were still underway.
