Dear Editor,
May Day is our day, set aside internationally to commemorate our centuries of struggle. The world over, labour not only celebrates but assesses its gains and victories, its set-backs and failures and lays the basis for the future.
We in Guyana have nothing to celebrate. The workers became disillusioned with their unions for their demonstrated failure to be a militant instrument fighting for the workers’ bread and butter. Unfortunately, today we are again experiencing a rift in the trade union movement. Some unions are unhappy with the way the government is operating by employing non-Guyanese workers on projects funded by the taxpayers.
In 1919, Hubert N Critchlow saw that the workers were not receiving enough money for themselves and their families. He decided to form a trade union to allow workers to have a say in improving their working conditions, increasing their pay, having proper homes and medical attention. Most of them were very poor. He was the founder of the first trade union movement in British Guiana, and later became known as the father of trade unionism locally.
In 1946 a 29-year-old Dr Cheddi Jagan moved by the horrifying conditions which existed at plantation Port Mourant and beyond decided to divert his dentistry practice to the task of the poor and the suffering. He joined the MPCA, then the sole bargaining agent in the sugar industry and rose to the position of its treasurer. He soon resigned as he was against company unionism. Not long after he joined Dr JP Latchmansingh to form GIWU, with a view to providing genuine representation. The union was later renamed GAWU.
May Day for some sections of the local labour force, especially public servants, has lost its importance and relevance to their daily battles for better conditions of work and livelihood. The reasons are all too evident: a lack of firm conviction and action by their trade union and government over the past decades. With the growing unemployment situation in Guyana today, the bell is tolling for a change in relations between labour and government.
Yours faithfully,
Mohamed Khan
