About a week ago, with ‘tears in their eyes’, some of the executive members of the Guyana Public Service Union (GPSU) shared with the Stabroek News ‘their bewilderment at the lack of movement on the part of the administration to begin the collective bargaining process despite making several public statements about its importance’ (GPSU alarmed at gov’t lack of engagement on public service wage talks).
As reported, their lamentation was heart-wrenching. Upon coming to office, apparently the president went on TV and promised public servants a 20% across the board increase in wages and salaries, the reintroduction of the agency shop arrangement that had been withdrawn from the union by the PPP/C, and to begin collective bargaining by the first week in June last year.
I really felt for the comrades, as they claimed that none of these promises have materialised. Instead, the regime unilaterally established the commission of inquiry into the public service and then told the union that negotiations had to await the commission’s report. The commission has submitted its report and not only have negotiations not begun but the union is now hearing that there will be ‘no increase across the board but people will be rewarded according to their performance’ (Ibid).
Workers are asking, ‘Hey what’s going on? What’s the government saying? What’s the union doing?’ The representative from Region 5 transmitted a sense of abundant hopelessness: ‘the union is already in position to have this negotiation commence but we can do nothing if the government does not follow their part of the bargain’ (Ibid).
So why has the government been treating an important section of its core constituency so shabbily? Horrible as it may sound, one union executive believes that the coalition has found and adopted the PPP/C playbook. He does not see the government doing anything before Christmas. ‘We will have an imposition which they will claim is being put in place until negotiations are completed’ (Ibid).
This position is not without some foundation. The regime will want its workers to be happy at Christmas, and à la PPP/C, has come to realise that if it does not wait until then to pay, it will most likely have an unhappy workforce at Christmas and may even have to find additional resources to give some kind of a bonus!
Given what may satisfy the union (20% across the board) and the stated government position that large increases should not be expected, the negotiations could be prolonged to end in arbitration sometime in the new year. In the meantime, to placate the workers the regime could make an interim payout at Christmas.
Of course, this kind of employer/government manoeuvring is unhelpful as it undercuts the collective bargaining process which should be utilised to develop a mutually beneficial healthy industrial relations environment. Indeed, properly organised, the collective bargaining process can accommodate all the concerns expressed in the paragraphs immediately above and facilitate an outcome that is generally acceptable.
Added to this, the leadership of the PPP/C must be following what is taking place between the government and the GPSU with glee as it plays right into the hands of its propagandists. It is very much part of the received wisdom of the PPP that the African/PNC/GPSU were an essential part of an ‘axis of evil’ that included the United Force, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) etc., that removed it from office in the 1960s and against elements of which it has to fight to this day.
That party only needs to point to the behaviour of the GPSU today, when only months into the 1992 PPP/C regime, it and its colleague unions took strike action in spite of the fact that the Cheddi Jagan government was making significant efforts to improve the salaries of public servants. No doubt, with their historical relationship in his mind, almost immediately on coming to office on 13 April 1993, the Cheddi Jagan government tried to placate the union. It raised the minimum of $131.49 a day to $174.17 a day as from 1 July 1992 and to $191 a day from 1 January 1993 – some 46%. And please note that Jagan backdated pay to a period when the PPP/C was not in office. But notwithstanding these increases, the GPSU went on strike between 15 and 17 September 1993 and 11 and 20 May 1994 to press the regime for greater increases.
This rambunctious industrial environment persisted, and in my opinion it was one such public service strike in 1999 that steeled the PPP in the false belief that its political dominance was the only way to fulfill its democratic mandate to rule in unruly normal conditions. And, so far as trade unions are concerned, the GPSU faced the brunt of the PPP/C quest for dominance and the union made no secret of its desire to see the back of that government.
Surely, the regime cannot hope to win any kudos for treating public servants so badly! Particularly in view of what follows, it is baffling that the present PNC-dominated regime is maltreating the union rather than dealing with its demands strategically!
If anything, given the historic relationship between the GPSU and the PPP, the government’s present position either forces the union to take some form of industrial action which it appears unable/unwilling to do or reinforces a central message of the PPP/C that there still exists a PNC/African led cabal that is implacably against PPP/Indian rule. After all, PPP/C supporters are now actually witnessing a union that was relentless against a more compliant Cheddi Jagan government pussy-footing and taking no substantial action in the face of blatant provocations by its traditional ally!
The government would have us believe that at the epicentre of its vision is the determination to build an ethnically cohesive society. If so, at the very least this requires the infusion of the requirements of this process across the entire range of government activities to account for negative ethnic impacts.
Why then does the regime not deal with the union in a timely manner rather than place it in a position where it reinforces a message that can only degrade its vaunted intention in the eyes of half, if not more, of this country?
It appears to me that, quite unnecessarily and perhaps even unconsciously, once again politics has trumped the bigger picture of trying to cultivate an environment that can facilitate our becoming a united Guyana.
