A planned signing of a long-in-the-works collective labour agreement between the Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA) and the Guyana Public Service Union (GPSU) has been postponed.
While the agreement was due to be signed yesterday at the Department of Labour, the GRA indicated its discomfort with changes that had been made to the draft agreement on the avoidance and settlement of disputes.
This agreement was necessitated by GRA’s departure from the public service when it became a semi-autonomous agency a few years ago.
After waiting for approximately 45 minutes at the venue, the union, which had invited the media to cover the signing, inform-ed that it was postponed due to GRA’s absence.
First President of the GPSU Dawn Gardener told reporters that when the union contacted GRA, Head of the Human Resources Management Department Glendon Harris informed that the agency had dispatched a correspondence during the course of the week to the GPSU. It is unclear what the contents of the correspondence were since the union claimed it had not received any documents.
According to Gardener, the union’s attorney, Abiola Wong-Inniss, was contacted by GRA’s attorney Joy Persaud, who indicated that the authority wanted to make some changes to the agreement. However, Wong-Inniss informed Persaud that the document should be sent directly to GPSU.
“We have been going through this for a while now and we have had a draft agreement for a number of years and we have been going back and forth until we have reached a stage of which we were happy about,” Gardener said while pointing out that the date for the signing was agreed upon since January 30th and that there was correspondence from Harris which had indicated that the GRA was going to sign the agreement.
Meanwhile, Commissioner-General of the GRA Godfrey Statia yesterday told Stabroek News that the agency is committed and stands ready to sign the agreement with the GPSU. However, he stated that the union had made changes to the draft agreement that they did not agree to and therefore the Human Resources Committee asked for superficial changes to be made.
He stated that the initial agreement was drafted and submitted to Chief Labour Officer Charles Ogle and while the document was there GPSU suggested changes.
Statia, nonetheless, said that he and others from his agency will be meeting with GPSU next Tuesday to “hammer out everything and finally concluded talks on the agreement.”
GRA in 2016, officially recognised GPSU as the labour representative for its employees and has engaged in negotiations with the Union to arrive at a collective bargaining agreement. Management of the GRA had in 2016 notified employees that they were free to join the union.
