One of the obstacles in the way of achieving any kind of rational governance in Guyana is the politicisation of so many organisations in the society. And those which are genuinely not political are nevertheless often perceived to be so by the government of the day, especially if they are given to criticism. In the case of the trade unions it is well known that there is more than one instance where political affiliations cannot be denied. It should be added, however, that this has never prevented any central administration from negotiating with them on pay and conditions when the necessity arose.
The tension between politics and one branch of trade unionism played out in the open this week as a consequence of a contretemps between Minister of Education Priya Manickchand and the Guyana Teachers’ Union. On Tuesday the General Council of the GTU decided to hold what they called a “spontaneous protest” over attempts by the Ministry of Education to bypass them in the decision-making process during the pandemic.
Ms Manickchand was clearly affronted by the demonstration and wasted no time in calling a press conference to refute the union’s claims. Her initial position as reported by the state newspaper was that there was no need for protest; “these issues are on the table, and we are addressing them,” she said. She was also reported as going on to say that had a “sensible issue” been raised, she would have been happy to address it. The real focus of her ire, however, was GTU General Secretary Coretta McDonald, ostensibly because she is also an MP for APNU+AFC.
Never one to open herself to accusations of tact and diplomacy, Stabroek News recounted that the Minister repeatedly disparaged Ms McDonald, in addition to which she described her as a “political being.” The protest, she claimed, was a demonstration of the General Secretary’s hurt feelings, although precisely what she was hurt about and why was not enlarged upon. Ms Manickchand then proceeded to accuse the union executive of using her position in the GTU to push the agenda of the opposition, instead of placing the needs of teachers first.
On the basis of this flimsy premise, Ms Manickchand seems to have persuaded herself that the teachers’ union was becoming political in character: “The PPP/C as a party and as a government has never shied away from dealing politically with [a] political organisation,” she was quoted as saying; “we are happy to engage the union as a professional union, but if it becomes a political entity, and frankly, this is how it is shaping up, then we will engage it as a political entity.” Exactly what that means in practice can only be surmised.
The Minister seems to have forgotten that perhaps the most political union in this country has always been GAWU, and no doubt she would have been in the front line of the chorus had the PNC in any of its forms refused to meet on issues of wages, for example, because of its associations. That contradiction aside, however, as our report noted, it is not clear which of the issues raised by the GTU in its protest represented an opposition position, and neither did Ms Manickchand seem inclined to enlighten anybody on that front either.
Furthermore, it could as reasonably be claimed that Ms McDonald had been named to the parliamentary benches with a view to informing opposition positions on education, as that her function was to ensure the union followed opposition policy, even supposing it had such a policy, which there is no evidence it does. The Minister’s histrionics on the subject are even more puzzling considering that Ms McDonald is not the President of the GTU, Mr Mark Lyte is, and no one has ever accused him of political partisanship. Furthermore, the General Secretary is just one among a number of executives, and she must be gifted with unusual talent and charisma if she can impose her will on all of them in defiance of their better professional judgement.
This is not to say that it would not be in the GTU’s interest for Ms McDonald to resign her position even supposing that at the union level she will not allow political considerations to infect her stances. The problem is not her intentions, however, it is a question of public perception. And even although her party is not in government, she could still find herself potentially in a conflict-of-interest situation, where her views on a topic could be confused with those of the union. Such may be the case, for example, with the ‘Because we care’ cash grant.
All of that still does not justify the Minister’s eccentric if not perverse conclusions. There was some toing and froing on the question of meetings which it would require considerable space to disentangle, but Ms Manickchand did not deny that the GTU had not been consulted prior to the decision in relation to the holding of the National Grade Six Assessment. Her response was, however, that while the union is an important stakeholder it is not the only stakeholder which the Ministry consults. “[W]e have been speaking to teachers and that is what informs our policy. It was the teachers that asked us to put the date at the first week of August,” she was quoted as saying.
Mr Lyte’s answer as given to this newspaper is very much in order. “Even if MoE consults with wider groups, the union remains a major stakeholder in education, representing about 75% of the teaching population. They should’ve come back to the union and say, ‘look this is what the parents are saying, this is what these teachers have said’…they did not do that.”
It might be asked if the GTU represents 75% of the teachers, exactly how many teachers did the Ministry consult? For practical reasons it could only have been a fraction of the full complement, in addition to which who decides which teachers it will listen to? Is the process a selective one? Unperturbed by the implications it appears that Ms Manickchand let it be known she was unlikely to address the complaint that the union was being sidelined in favour of talking directly to teachers. One can only observe that this has the characteristics of a political act.
Then there is the matter of unpaid clothing allowances for 2019, which was included in the protest issues. In that instance the Ministry had told the union that they needed to take that protest to Congress Place. Mr Lyte described the reaction as “disrespectful”. Indeed it is. As he went on to comment, a government inherits agreements; “[the] GTU does not have an agreement with any political party, it has an agreement with the Government of Guyana.” The Minister said that allowances for 2020 and 2021 were to be paid and so there was no need for the protest. But she is avoiding the question of the 2019 allowances and is not addressing herself to Mr Lyte’s point.
In similar vein Ms Manickchand claimed that de-bunching in the teaching service was an issue inherited by her government after five years of inaction by the coalition. Mr Lyte corrected her: “The de-bunching of the teaching service was first agreed in 2011 but not enacted by the PPP/C administration. As part of negotiations to end the 2018 strike action the then APNU+AFC paid a one-off lump sum of $350M to teachers and agreed to the crafting of a de-bunching scale. That scale is still to be finalised,” he explained.
The GTU President’s particular concern is that owing to the behaviour of the Ministry, which may call a meeting or send a letter after the union tries to raise a matter, no meaningful engagement is actually happening. As such, “teachers are believing that the union is not addressing their concerns because time is going and no feedback is received.” But Ms Manickchand clings on to the misplaced allegation that the protest is political in nature. “The union must decide if it wants to separate itself from being a political organization; if it wants to separate itself from the nasty politics of the APNU+AFC and continue being a professional body, or if it wants to engage in that kind of politics.”
It can only be asked what is political about de-bunching issues, the payment of clothing allowances, concerns about teachers in the Covid environment, not being consulted on the NGSA, in fact not being consulted on a range of educational issues by the Ministry? This is a case not of a union going political, but of the Ministry of Education behaving politically and imposing political categories on a workers’ representative body.