Ahead of a General Council meeting scheduled for September 2, members of the Guyana Public Service Union (GPSU) are being invited to share their views on the increase in wages and salaries being offered by the Government of Guyana (GoG).
A notice in the Sunday Stabroek by the GPSU urges its members to “be a part of the struggle for a merited and meaningful increase in [their] earnings.”
Reminding that previous agreements, arbitration rulings and reports including the Lutchman Commission of Inquiry set up by the government have linked improved efficiency and effectiveness in the public service to meaningful increases in wages, salaries and allowances, the union asks its members to share their view “through letters and emails to the union and to the various public channels of communication including national print and electronic media houses.”
Declaring that its desired objective in the negotiations with the GoG is the realization of a living wage for public servants, the union said that the period immediately ahead is being allowed for public servants to voice their individual and collective views on the offer which the GoG has said will be the final one.
Additionally, the Union notes that there has been no meaningful progress on the issues of allowances and de-bunching.
The Government last week issued a release on its “final offer” for differentiated wage increases for public servants ranging from 10% at the lowest scale to 1% at the highest.
This offer falls far below the GPSU’s initial demand of a 40% across-the-board hike.
Meanwhile, veteran trade unionist and General Secretary of the Trades Union Congress (TUC) Lincoln Lewis has called for the government to be more creative and look to history as a means of offering workers a satisfactory package.
Declaring that the 10% differentiated payment offered is out of order, Lewis reminded that “in the 1960’s the PPP government said they could not pay and a strike originated from the not-a-cent more declaration of the PPP.”
It was after this, according to Lewis, that both the PNC and UF promised during their elections campaign to offer workers a significant increase.
“After they won Peter d’Aguiar stood in Parliament and said the economy is not as strong as we perceived but we have made a commitment to the workers and we have to honour it…which he did. Further, in 1980 when the government met with the teacher’s union Minister of Education Jeffrey Thomas agreed on an array of things. The cabinet reviewing it said they could not honour this but the Burnham government called in Carl Greenidge who was Chief State planner and he was given a week to come with something since the minister had promised the teachers. He came with a proposal for deferred wages and from that was got deferred income where workers got some of their payment in cash and others in bonds which after three years could be claimed with interest. I am surprised to know that they didn’t come out with something like that to give the workers something satisfactory and that 10% is all they are offering. The principal actors from 1980 are still alive. If you can’t pay it now you defer and we have to be sure we don’t just think of the public service we have to do better for our police who protect us and our teachers. 10% just can’t work,” Lewis said.
The government release said that it was pointed out to the GPSU that the government’s final offer for wages and salaries increases for public servants had taken into consideration the current socio-economic environment; the difficulty in agreeing to increases that would entail having to mobilize additional revenue and the unsustainability of any further addition to its offer with regard to the current and future budgets. The GPSU release yesterday also said that the government failed to provide them with requested information on several aspects of government’s revenues and expenditures.
