On the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the longest public service strike in Guyana’s history, the Public Service Union (GPSU) yesterday registered its dissatisfaction with the current state of industrial relations, including the continuing failure to respect collective bargaining in the negotiations of salaries.
According to GPSU President Patrick Yarde, 20 years after the 57-day strike of 1999, the union still struggles to have government adhere to legally binding agreements.
“With the change of government in 2015, they gave a commitment to restore collective bargaining but soon thereafter we were faced with the same modality of impositions,” Yarde told reporters at the GPSU’s headquarters in Georgetown yesterday.
He went on to note that since then, despite promises otherwise, collective bargaining is not being respected and other issues also persist. He, however, refuses to commit to engaging in any industrial action although several “ultimatums” to that effect have been sent to government agencies.
Yarde shared a series of letters between the union and the Ministry of Public Health in which the union states that its executive council, as of January 17th, 2019, had mandated that “industrial action [in the sector] be taken from February 28 or anytime thereafter.”
The industrial action had been expected to protest the working conditions and other ill-treatment of health care workers and technicians in the public service, public sector and at the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC).
According to the letter, these issues had been drawn to the attention of the Minister within the Minister of Public Health Dr Karen Cummings and Chief Executive Officer of GPHC Brigadier (Ret’d) George Lewis but remained unaddressed.
In response to the union’s ultimatum of January 24th, a ministry representative met with the GPSU on January 31st and agreed to the formation of two committees comprising representative from both sides.
Ceased
Despite these promises, meetings of the committees ceased after an initial February 13th meeting. “The committees are not meeting as they should because most members of your team are not making themselves available. There were times when only the Union’s representative showed up for planned meetings and sometimes only one or two representatives from your team showed up,” Vice President Dawn Gardener lamented in a letter to Minister Volda Lawrence, dated April 8th, 2018.
She added that the union made numerous attempts to meet Lawrence “but to date those attempts were not successful.”
Yarde stressed that the situation was merely indicative of the state of affairs with several government agencies which had been less than willing to engage the union but he could give no clear answer on how the union would respond to these actions. “There is a resistance to due process and a recognition that we are being frustrated,” Yarde stressed before repeating that the union is “not anxious to disrupt the country.”
He stressed that the 1999 action was initiated after seven years, before adding that the union has only been working with this government for four.
Yarde further claimed that within several agencies there is a blatant disregard for due process and members’ rights.
“Natural justice is being trampled upon and there is [not] adherence to the principles that are intended to ensure law with fairness and secure justice,” he said.
Yarde cited as example a “new phenomena” of terminating the service of workers based on “loss of confidence,” noting that a Human Resource Clerk, Mahawattie Goopcharran, had been dismissed by the National Agricultural Research and Extension Institute (NAREI) after 20 years in the post.
He stressed that “loss of confidence” is not listed within the Public Service Code of Conduct as an offence, much less one which would require such a degree of discipline.
However documents released by the union show that Goopcharran was a contract employee whose contract was not renewed due to “unsatisfactory performance.”
A letter, dated April 12th, from GPSU to the NAREI Board states, “It is contradictory to issue a certificate of appreciation…in October 2018 for outstanding performance and soon thereafter terminate her services for unsatisfactory performance.”
Goopcharran’s contract had last been renewed in 2016 for three years and was set to expire on April 30, 2019. On March 28 she was informed that “a decision for the non-renewal…effective May 1, 2019 had been taken.”
Additionally the board had decided to pay her one month’s salary in lieu of notice and required that she not report for duty as of April 1, 2019.
While the union indicated that it would be willing to “fight this case” to the end, including in the courts if necessary, there was no mention of the offence Goopcharran is alleged to have committed though the “submission of a report” was mentioned in its letter to NAREI Board Chair Delma Nedd.
“The union wishes to restate that no charges were made against Ms Goopcharran nor was she given the opportunity to respond…[she] was denied her right to Natural Justice and mere submission of a report which was used as the basis to determine the non-renewal of [her] contract was devoid of due process and should be rescinded,” the letter states.
Stabroek News contacted Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of NAREI Dr Oudho Homenauth who said he was unaware of any investigation regarding Goopcharran.
“I know her contract wasn’t renewed. The why is a board matter, I can’t respond to that,” he said.
The union also accused the Guyana Revenue Authority of “about a dozen” unjustified dismissals in the last four months alone.
“The issue of security of tenure is still unresolved. Contract employment still continues to exist at an undesirable level. Respect for the collective bargaining to address negotiations of salaries and allowances is still not being honoured,” Yarde repeatedly lamented.
