A little more than four years after it promised to restore collective bargaining for all the relevant elements of the public service, the APNU+AFC government is receiving mixed to negative reviews on its progress.
Union leaders have told Sunday Stabroek that it appears the coalition simply bit off more than it could chew and made no effort to establish a policy framework as a structured means to realise its promises.
“It is not enough to say we will follow a policy of collective bargaining there must be clear policy framework guided by your developmental thrust,” says Lincoln Lewis.
Lewis, a veteran trade unionist who now holds the post of General Secretary of the Guyana Trades Union Congress (GTUC) offers cautious praise of the government’s work as arbiter between employees and private companies but criticizes its record as employer.
“While they have made a few errors on some major things we are comforted that they will stand with us for respect of collective bargaining in this country,” he explained noting that the PPP/C administration joined with Russian Bauxite Company – RUSAL Guyana, RUSAL from 2008 to 2015 to “beat the workers.”
“They took the side of the employer and never publicly condemned what was done to workers. It is first time in history of this country that something like that happened and was allowed to continue. It was the lowest ebb in collective bargaining,” he said of that time.
According to Lewis, as the employer the Coalition government has stumbled because the political head of the Labour department is not grounded in rights and rule of law.
“They continue to do the same or similar things that the previous government did when it comes to dealing with public sector and collective bargaining,” he lamented.
For Lewis, policies must change from government to government and Guyana’s labour policy must be guided by the conventions and recommendation of the International Labour Organisation (ILO) rather than mere lip service.
“They will say there is a Tripartitie committee but it is just a name as it exists without guidelines,” he explained adding that while Manifesto’s are supposed to be a contract with the nation they have become mere promises to be elected.
The National Tripartitie Committee was established in October 2015 based on ILO recommendations to deal with matters relating to industrial relations, human resource management and labour policies. It is not clear what, if anything, has been accomplished since that time.
Speaking specifically about government’s engagement with the unions representing Public Servants, namely the Guyana Public Service Union (GPSU) and the Guyana Teachers’ Union (GTU), Lewis said too much of government’s engagement with these union were just meetings with no real end result. “They could’ve engaged GPSU and GTU to develop and negotiate a new package. You can’t engage just to say you have engaged. I’m talking about constructive engagement with an end goal not just meeting,” he stressed.
Not respected
Lewis’ sentiment that the unions made every effort to engage government is borne out by public statement made by GPSU President Patrick Yarde.
Yarde had told reporters in April that efforts to engage in collective bargaining have failed.
“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,” he said on the 20th anniversary of the longest public service strike in Guyana’s history.
Yarde has consistently bemoaned the fact that collective bargaining is not being respected but refuses to commit to engaging in any industrial action even as he sends government agencies’ “ultimatums”.
For four years his union has been unable to complete any negotiation with the current administration.
In October 2017 the same day government announced unilateral increases, Permanent Secretary (PS) of the Department of Public Service Reginald Brotherson claimed that negotiations between government and the GPSU were being held in a “spirit of cordiality and mutual respect.” He also noted that they were started less than a month before and proceeded despite the GPSU’s position that the 2016 negotiations remain incomplete.
“The union is very strong in their belief that the 2016 negotiations was not concluded,” Brotherson said, while explaining that the union had referenced a letter, dated December 5, 2016, which said that negotiations on allowances, wages and salaries were incomplete.
The PS noted that while government acknowledged that negotiations on allowances were incomplete, its position is that the 2016 increases for wages and salary were final.
This was particularly surprising since the union had written the Labour Department in August 2016 requesting a conciliation process to resolve deadlock in the negotiations which arose after the government’s negotiating team announced that its final offer to the union was differentiated wage increases for public servants ranging from 10% at the lowest scale to 1% at the highest.
The union, which had adjusted its initial demand of a 40% across-the-board raise to 25%, subsequently rejected the offer and requested conciliation but this did not occur. Instead the entire negotiation process seemed to have stalled.
In January this year the GPSU executive council mandated that “industrial action [in the Health Sector] be taken from February 28th 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) and Executive Council’s decision was sent as an ultimatum to the Ministry of Public Health According to the letter, these issues had been drawn to the attention of then Minister within the Ministry 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. Despite these promises, meetings of the committees ceased after an initial February 13th meeting.
Additionally, numerous attempts to meet Minister of Health Volda Lawrence “were not successful.”
“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.”
This newspaper reached out to Yarde for an update on efforts to engage the various Ministries but up to press time he could not be reached.
High hopes
Lewis was hesitant to condemn the union’s seeming lack of action.
“Unions can only request that government come to the table, they can’t bring them kicking and screaming. They [the unions] have done their jobs of drafting and presenting proposals for collective bargaining. It is for government to respect protocol,” he noted, before adding that a strike or other industrial action is an impediment to collective bargaining. He argued that the spirit and intent of grievance procedure is to avoid and settle disputes and to be forced to engage in strike action is to acknowledge that you have failed that spirit and intent.
One union which was forced to accept that failure is the GTU. On August 28th, 2018 Guyana’s teachers took to the streets to protest government’s failure to accept a multi-year proposal for salary increases and other benefits. In response the Ministry of Education announced contingency plans, including the deployment of trainees.
Chief Education Officer Marcel Hutson appealed to the teachers to return to the classroom for the September 3rd opening day, claiming “that anyone who hampers the progress of children should revisit the way they do things.”
“Sometimes we have to put the children above ourselves,” Hutson stressed. The teachers were unmoved by his plea and for six days the education system was brought to its knees. The strike ended on September 7th, when the parties agreed to arbitration.
According to GTU General Secretary Corretta McDonald, the government set itself up with its promises.
“The major issue was the high hopes given and not being able to stand up to that. Teachers were given a lot of hope that a lot of their issues would’ve been addressed,” McDonald noted.
She expressed the belief that government must’ve had some plan to be so specific in its manifesto before positing that resources might have stopped its execution. The manifesto promised that the APNU+AFC government would unveil a programme that considered the special needs of teachers with a view towards providing special concessions to incentivise them to remain in Guyana.
“I think they came in with a plan because of all the discussions they had as opposition. Making the kind of promises you made in your manifesto you had to have knowledge,” she said.
According to McDonald, in some cases the coalition government is like a new teacher being assigned a class which is severely behind in the syllabus.
“You have to finish the work left over before you even start your own,” she shared, adding that from the outside it’s easier to establish priority positions but harder to back them up.
“As opposition you can say that teachers will be priority but once in office you realise the Joint Services have serious needs as do health workers and social workers etc,” McDonald explained.
For now, the GTU has halted negotiations for a 2019 to 2021 wages package as they work to have all those thing promised after the 2018 strike delivered.
“Some conditions from the previous agreement have not yet been implemented. For example, we have been assured that outstanding issues, such as establishing the salary bands for de-bunching is in progress. Clothing allowance will be paid this month as will Whitley Council allowance and the Ministry of Finance is rectifying miscalculations which saw teachers’ not being paid an extra 2% increase on their 2016 salaries,” she noted.
