“I suspect the GTU … have found themselves in this box and they would be pushing to have hopefully the Ministry of Labour and the chief labour officer … extricate them from there,” Labour Minister Joseph Hamilton was quoted by the state newspaper yesterday as saying. He seems to have things in reverse, because it is the government which has found itself in a box. From Essequibo to Demerara to Berbice, the teachers in embarrassingly large numbers have spoken, and what they had to say is not what the administration expected to hear.
The government has been pushing two lines of argument against the strike called by the Guyana Teachers’ Union over salaries and related matters: one, that it is illegal, and two that it is political. It is Chief Labour Officer Dhaneshwar Deonarine who first deemed it illegal, although the thread of his reasoning is something of a challenge to comprehend.
The GTU has maintained that they have followed all the procedures laid down in a 1990 agreement with the Ministry of Education for the settlement of disputes, and have now arrived at the stage of arbitration. Mr Deonarine, however, refutes this because he claims the union is still in negotiation with the Ministry. This is to ignore one very salient fact, namely, that the Education Ministry does not negotiate wages and salaries; that is a responsibility which falls under the Office of the President and that office has not met the union for very many months.
President Irfaan Ali interrupted the process by inviting head teachers and senior members of staff to a meeting at State House last October, subsequently imposing an across-the-board 6.5% increase on all public workers. In an indirect acknowledgement of this the Chief Labour Officer said that the President had made public pronouncements, intervening and meeting with teachers across the country “including union representatives” to address their concerns.
This is a serious misrepresentation of the facts; while there may or may not have been the odd ‘union representative’ at the encounter, anyone there attended in an unofficial capacity. By no stretch of the imagination could it be said that President Ali negotiated with the union per se at his garden party, let alone that a 6.5% increase was agreed. Notwithstanding the fact that based on the evidence in the public domain the GTU has a case regarding collective bargaining in connection with a proposal first put forward in 2020, the Greek chorus in the Cabinet is insisting that the strike is illegal, citing Mr Deonarine as their source.
Then there is the political allegation which has its origins in the fact that GTU General Secretary Coretta McDonald became an APNU MP in 2020, although she worked for the union many years before that. Why that makes the GTU a political entity but not GAWU, whose President also sits as an MP, is not something the PPP/C has ever bothered to explain.
That has not inhibited officials from hammering home the political theme in their statements. These include the Chief Education Officer, Vice President Jagdeo (who took the opposite line to the 2018 teachers’ strike when the coalition was in office), the Minister of Education and even the President, who urged the teachers not to be used as “political pawns”, describing “the situation with the teachers as having been overtaken by political expediency.”
Even the AG had his say, being quoted by the state paper as saying, “The main protagonist in this strike is a politician, Coretta McDonald … So, there is no doubt in my view that the strike is politically driven.” He was reported as criticising the union’s alignment with opposition parties, which had endorsed the strike without expressing disagreement with anything the GTU had said thereby indicating “complicity between the union and the opposition.” As a seriously flawed argument it hardly did him credit as the country’s chief legal officer, any more than did his apparent ignorance of the fact that the Education Ministry does not negotiate teachers’ salaries.
But the teachers are not fools; they are not anyone’s ‘political pawns’ and they made their position quite clear about why they had come out. Contrary to the propaganda emanating from the powers that be, they said it was all about poor salaries especially, as well as allowances and related matters, and collective bargaining.
Teachers in all three counties told us very similar things: “We have no interest of who is in government. All we are saying is fix those wages and those issues that are going on at school,” said one. “You’re telling me that they can’t at least come to the bargaining table, even if it is half way and please teachers a little bit. But no, the disrespect is too much so we’re going to stay out here,” said another. This was echoed by yet another educator who told our reporter: “[W]e feel there is a need for us to return to collective bargaining whereby both sides put their proposal on the table and then they negotiate to come up with something tangible for the teachers.”
A Region 7 teacher on secondment told us: “People don’t know what teachers in the hinterland go through. The cost of living is very high. How you expect our salary to maintain our family?” The hardship affecting junior teachers particularly, and the need of many categories to have other jobs as well in order to make ends meet was a recurring theme. Our reports containing comments from teachers on strike in all parts of the coastland last week tell their own story.
The government’s response followed a familiar pattern. First the Ministry of Education tried to suggest that most schools were working and the strike had little impact, but in an era of social media as well as with the press visiting schools that didn’t get very far. So the authorities then moved into intimidation mode in a futile attempt to quash the teachers’ action. Inevitably, of course, they had accused the other side of threats and intimidation, although there was absolutely no evidence of that.
In Mabaruma we were told that although the teachers were very supportive of the strike, some of them were “terrified,” being “told by the superiors that they will be dealt with according to ministry rules.” On the West Bank and West Coast teachers refused to speak to the media, apparently out of fear after being ordered by the Ministry not to do so.
Then of course the police in full gear with bullet-proof vests and guns on hips were sent to schools on the East Coast and East Bank to solicit information about teachers’ attendance.
Commander of ‘B’ Division Krishna Ramana was anything but informative when asked about it, while the ever unenlightening Commissioner Hicken told this newspaper, “I don’t know anything about that.”
This was in addition to announcing that the Ministry would cease deducting union dues from salaries and that teachers would not be paid while they were on strike, because the Chief Labour Officer said the action was illegal. There was some recognition in government that the political argument and the intimidatory tactics were not producing results, so Minister Hamilton amended the position to say, “It [the strike] might have started where teachers indeed were prosecuting their grievance but this now is political.” This was because it had been taken over by APNU+AFC as evidenced by their participation in the protest in front of the Labour Ministry. The strike was not about the negotiations, he maintained.
All that can be said in response is that the teachers almost certainly have news for him.
Mr Jagdeo’s new allegation, which was echoed by Mr Hamilton, was that the GTU had last filed financial returns for 2004. Even if the accusation is true it still has nothing to do with the strike and teachers’ wages, although a financial account would have to be given in the not-too-distant future.
The President’s appeal to teachers was to be patient, as he had promised incremental benefits. What the teachers are arguing for is collective bargaining, and where that is concerned they have the law on their side. In addition to that, all the thousands of teachers struggling financially are in no mood to be patient. The more the government flogs the dead horse of a political, illegal strike, the more it boxes itself in. It cannot have escaped its attention that the teachers have come out in numbers even in its heartland areas, where many of them would not dream of voting for APNU. It is an insult to them, therefore, to suggest they would be manipulated by that party now. What they are looking for is more money, not a change of government.
If the government wants to get out of the box, the OP particularly should go back to the negotiating table with the union. And as for President Ali, he should learn that trying to undercut the collective bargaining process is a mistake.