No keen observer of the contemporary condition of industrial relations in Guyana would seriously challenge the view that the trade union movement remains enmeshed in a protracted condition of limbo that has palpably compromised its ability to effectively discharge its responsibility to provide meaningful representation for its constituency, the country’s workers.
The prevailing condition is a combination of a few factors. One of those has to do with a protracted faceoff between labour and successive political administrations for the ‘hearts and minds’ of workers which this government, for now at least, would appear to have won. Another has to do with an incremental diminishing of the capacity of labour to effectively represent its members. Here, the reasons range from labour’s own leadership failings, the movement’s ability to effectively replace stalwarts who have now either passed on or are ‘past it’ insofar as providing effective leadership is concerned. There are instances, too, in which structural ineptitude has simply brought some trade unions to a shuddering halt in all but name.
There was something stark and sobering about the report in the Stabroek News of Tuesday October 10 of the veteran trade unionist and longstanding President of the Guyana Trades Union Congress (GTUC), Lincoln Lewis, spelling out labour’s ‘wish list’ for workers ahead of government’s disclosure of what’s in the country’s 2024 budget in a year when financial allocations are expected to take more meaningful account of the country’s petro earnings than this year. Labour’s ‘wish list’ would have been made public on Friday October 6th during exchanges between teams led by Lewis, on the side of the trade union movement, and Prime Minister Mark Phillips on the side of the political administration. That the labour lineup alongside Lewis would have lacked what in cricketing parlance might be referred to as the ‘batting depth’ of a decade or so ago served as a poignant reminder that time, infirmity and death have taken a considerable toll on the GTUC’s ‘top order’ as was patently obvious from the lineup during the recent engagement.
Time and circumstances, not least the contemporary inability of labour to ‘turn out’ fitting replacements for its stalwarts of yesteryear have seriously diminished its ability to provide adequate worker representation. These factors, coupled with the incremental erosion of the state’s substantive recognition of the movement’s ‘legitimacy’ has left the trade union movement hobbled to the point where the phrase ‘workers’ rights’ has come to resemble a wearisome cliché, stripped of much of its substantive meaning. Here, it is worth mentioning that if the GTUC’s incumbent General Secretary is no longer seen as the firebrand workers’ champion that he used to be, he remains, seemingly, the singular symbol of the labour movement ‘of old.’ These days (and even Lewis himself is unlikely to question this) the labour movement stands drastically diminished.
Where its leadership is concerned, the trade union movement must, somehow, generate a new cadre of militants that can ‘fight’ in labour’s ‘corner’ in an environment which, in these days, is in many ways even more challenging than the era that is now close to being behind us. ‘Voice’ remains labour’s most potent `weapon’ and even that is, in the contemporary environment, lacking in the weight that it used to carry. Labour’s hobbled condition is, overwhelmingly, a function of the dramatically altered socio-economic focus of a country which, with the advent of its petro perspective, would appear to have further staunched the effectiveness of a labour movement whose potency had already been palpably in decline. No one, not even labour’s ageing but enduringly determinedly spirited GTUC General Secretary can honestly dent this. What, these days, are his occasional vociferous pushbacks against what he perceives to be transgressions of workers’ rights may not provide the movement with the traction which it seeks to sufficiently revitalize it. That said, they at least serve as periodic reminders that labour still ‘lives.’ Whether, however, those kinds of pinprick responses have covered much ground in pursuit of any real breakthrough for ‘the workers’ is an altogether different matter.
If the GTUC General Secretary deserves a generous measure of credit for ‘staying the course’ and continually representing ‘the voice of labour,’ the extent of the returns for the workers deriving from his efforts has been limited in the face of a decidedly more vigorous prevailing anti-union socio-political environment. Going forward, there are those who feel that labour will have to continue to row against a tide that will, in the immediate future, do workers no overwhelming favours. Labour, it is felt in some quarters, may over time, come to be supplanted by a regimen of state-imposed gestures in a socio-economic environment that could become part of an overarching wider petro-driven policy that systematically degrades the relevance of labour. Here, the fact of the matter is that the new key players, expatriates as much as local socio-political ‘movers and shakers’ possessed of much broader wealth-driven ambitions are probably unlikely, going forward, to be overly concerned with considerations like the workers’ struggle. The labour movement, unquestionably, stands at a critical crossroad.