The timing of the Guyana Public Service Union’s decision to serve the government with an industrial action ultimatum will not do the Guyana Teachers’ Union any favours. The teachers have been on strike for three weeks now demanding that the administration engage in collective bargaining as the law requires. Although the government is in default in this regard, having imposed a 6.5% increase on all public sector workers at the end of last year, it is still insistent that the strike is political in its objectives.
Since this industrial action will hardly benefit an enfeebled and ineffectual opposition it must be presumed that the ruling party sees it as simply a vindictive move designed to make life difficult for the government. Various spokesmen for the ruling party have justified their stance by reference to the fact that since 2020 the GTU’s General Secretary, Coretta McDonald, is also an APNU MP. The argument is, therefore, that by extension the union itself is opposition controlled and its demands opposition derived, and as such it can be ignored.
The government’s problem is that despite the constant political refrain emanating from a number of ministers, it is the teachers who are ignoring the claims. They know that the matter of a living wage is not a politically inspired one. They have families to feed and expenses to meet and their current salaries are insufficient for their needs. In addition they know they are the lowest paid teachers in the anglophone Caribbean, never mind the supposed robustness of this nation’s economy. They also know that the government is refusing to engage in collective bargaining, thereby bypassing the union on which they depend to negotiate any improvement in their financial situation and working conditions.
And they remember too that the GTU led them in strike action in 2018 when the current opposition held the reins of government. And Ms Mcdonald played the same role then as she plays now, with the union receiving expressions of appreciation from PPP General Secretary Bharrat Jagdeo at the time.
The extent of the government’s misreading of the teachers would have become very apparent when those based in PPP constituencies many of whom could not easily be categorised as opposition voters joined the walk-out. In fact the administration’s indirect suggestion that the teachers were being hoodwinked by the opposition will earn it no kudos in their eyes since it brands them as naïve at the very least.
The ruling party then resorted to its traditional intimidatory tactics as well as announcing that teachers would not be paid for the period they were on strike, and agency dues would not be deducted from their salaries. An attempt was made in addition to discredit the union in relation to its financial accounting. The overall aim was to try and quash the action, but so far this has not dissuaded the teachers from refusing to return to the classroom.
One would have thought that sooner or later the government would have had to cast around for some arrangement, perhaps involving the Labour Ministry, which would allow the strike to be called off. It is in no position to provide online lessons across the country, and parents with children in examination classes are inevitably anxious. The very suggestion of online learning would seem to indicate that the government was hoping that if it held out for long enough the strike would collapse, but even if that happened, its standing with the teachers would not recover in a hurry, and President Ali’s ‘One Guyana’ mantra would be dismissed as insincere.
And so now we have the Public Service Union entering the picture. Several commentators have remarked that if the government paid the teachers then they would have to entertain increases for the public servants. That should not be so. The only thing the two groups of employees have in common is that they are both paid by the state, along with some other categories of workers. Teaching work is very distinct and is quite unlike the duties that public servants undertake. As a consequence the salary scales too are not comparable, while there is no parallel either in terms of working conditions. Despite the importance of encouraging gifted people into the teaching profession and retaining those that are already there given the increased importance of education, the government has now lumped the two classes of workers together by refusing to engage in collective bargaining with both their unions on political grounds.
Yet the history of the GPSU and strike action is quite different from that of the GTU. As already indicated the teachers’ union has fought for better remuneration for its members under two different governments, politics notwithstanding, but the public servants as a whole group haven’t been on strike since 1999. That was a bitter experience lasting 57 days, which ended in high arbitral awards. The course and origins of the action had complexities which were not characteristic of the teachers’ strikes, and did, at least as it affected some workers, have a political element.
Partly on account of the pay-out which ended it and partly probably for political reasons, the PPP/C government has refused to engage in collective bargaining with the GPSU ever since.
The union had great hopes of the coalition government, but like its predecessor it imposed wage hikes, even after there was an agreement with then President Granger in November 2019 to set up a high level committee to look at wages and salaries.
But there is a further reason why public servants have not been on strike for almost a quarter of a century and it relates to the union leadership, which faced criticism during the strike and then afterwards over the operations of the credit union among other things, and the fact it had been in office for so long. It has always been assumed that if the GPSU called a strike, public servants would probably not respond in any numbers. So now if the ultimatum does not receive a positive response from government, this will be put to the test.
It is not as if, according to President Patrick Yarde, the GPSU does not have cause, and according to documents released by the Ministry of Labour the GPSU has been requesting collective bargaining for years without achieving any constructive response from the Public Service Ministry. The union had asked Chief Labour Officer Dhaneshwar Deonarine for conciliation last September, and he had written Solicitor General Nigel Hawke the following month seeking an opinion on whether he would be prevented from providing such, considering that the union had gone to court against the Public Service Ministry and the matter would be sub judice.
Mr Hawke did not reply until February 21, 2024 saying he should yield to the court’s jurisdiction, and the same day the Chief Labour Officer formally responded to the union’s September letter, although that was after the GPSU had expressed a loss of confidence in him since he had not answered their letter.
If the government decides to resume collective bargaining with the GPSU, or allow the intervention of the Labour Ministry, it will have to do the same with the teachers. It could, for example, decide to go back to the bargaining table with the teachers first. If it resolves to let events take their course, then much would depend on how many public servants responded to the strike call. Together with the teachers, if a large number of workers came off the job that would present a serious challenge to the authorities for all kinds of reasons, and would hardly present the image of the stable society the government wants to promote.
Since the GPSU has something of a political patina the GTU does not, whatever the government says, some of the teachers might be leery of continuing their action if they are linked together with the public servants; ideally, they would not wish to have any conflation of their issues. If large numbers of public servants do not come out, that conceivably might not affect the teachers to the same extent, but would make the government feel it had no reason to compromise.
In the end the ruling party has to return to following the Constitution and the law where the unions are concerned, no matter what it thinks of them. In circumstances where ordinary people see billions being spent on flashy infrastructure and they are told Guyana is one of the fastest growing economies in the world, they will not be satisfied to be “patient” as the President wants; they think their survival issues should be addressed now. People come before roads and hotels.