University of Guyana (UG) workers have been paid their wages with agreed increases, resulting in their unions holding off plans to resume industrial action.
Both the University of Guyana Senior Staff Association (UGSSA) and the University of Guyana Workers’ Union (UGWU) recently accused the UG administration of breaching the Terms of Resumption (TOR) agreement and an Interim Salary Increase agreement after workers did not receive any pay-outs. After a meeting last week, they had threatened to resume industrial action if workers were not paid by Thursday.
UGSSA President Dr Mellissa Ifill told Stabroek News on Thursday that she had been advised at a meeting on Wednesday evening that salaries with the agreed increases and previous deductions have been paid into the banks. She noted that once this is so, there will be no further industrial action as it was the nonpayment of these sums on which a threat of further action was premised. Workers yesterday said they were paid.
The unions were promised a 10% interim salary increase, retroactive from January 1, 2015 once they returned to work, which they did on March 3. However, UGWU President Bruce Haynes said while the parties had agreed that all staff be paid immediately upon returning to duty, when they turned out to work their salaries were not paid in full.
UG Vice-Chancellor Jacob Opadeyi, reacting to the charges raised by the unions, had denied that the ToR had been breached. He said that upon the full resumption of work on March 3, salaries were prepared for the workers that were on strike. That task, he claimed, was completed within three working days on March 5, 2015.
The TOR, signed on March 1, 2015, brought to an end five weeks of industrial action, which began with a sit-in after negotiations collapsed between the administration and the unions on wage increases. The administration refused the unions’ proposed salary increase and industrial action ensued. The sit-in soon escalated to a full-blown strike, which also saw students protesting, demanding the resumption of their classes.
Meanwhile, Ifill said the second round of negotiations between the unions and the administration’s negotiating team is set for March 31, 2015. Ifill expressed the hope that the administration team would approach this round of negotiations with “a little more openness” as efforts are made to once and for all resolve issues facing the staff of the university. The union representative had previously highlighted “intractable attitudes” from the administration’s negotiating team.
