Govt shies away from negotiating pay hike with Teachers’ Union; considers Online teaching if strike prolongs

Last Updated on Thursday, 15 February 2024, 18:44 by Denis Chabrol

Government on Thursday ruled out giving into pay increases being demanded by the Guyana Teachers’ Union (GTU), signaled no willingness to hold salary negotiations but instead said it might resort to Online learning if the now nine-day old strike continues indefinitely.

The GTU is proposing a 25 percent salary increase for 2019, and 20 percent for 2019 to 2023 and an additional performance-based incentive of 2 percent annually of the total teachers’ wage bill to eligible teachers during the period of the multi-year agreement. Further, the union wants a GY$5,000 emotional/ stress/risk allowance; a  monthly Internet allowance of GY$10,000; a GY$10,000 monthly allowance to teachers who use their own vehicles to perform official duties, and a fixed monthly allowance of GY$7,000 for headteachers/principals to conduct business on behalf of their institutions.

Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo said if government agreed with the GTU’s salary increases, that would mean that at a  graduate teacher would earn GY$500,000 or an unqualified teacher’s salary would be about GY$200,000. He suggested that would create a huge disparity in salaries for teachers, police, sugar workers and private and public sector workers who have five CXC subjects.

“This is totally unreasonable. We’ve made that clear,” he said when asked by Demerara Waves Online News.

With the teachers demanding that the government enters negotiations for increased salaries and allowances, Mr Jagdeo was asked whether government was ruling out going to the bargaining table. “I’m not ruling out anything. I’m just telling you what the facts are,” he said. He said government remained committed to addressing the teachers’ concerns but that would depend on the rectification of bad faith and “until some level of credibility is reestablished and we know that we’re acting only purely on concern for the teachers, it’s hard to engage.”

The GTU has strongly rebuffed government’s repeated claims that the strike is politically motivated by the opposition A Partnership for National Unity+Alliance For Change (APNU+AFC).

Describing the teachers’ salary increases so far as “modest” due to the 61 percent increase in wages and salaries for the education sector from 2020 to 2023, he said GTU was demanding increases dating back to 2019 that had not been considered by the then A Partnership for National Unity+Alliance For Change (APNU+AFC administration. Mr Jagdeo said his People’s Progressive Party Civic (PPPC) administration had provided more resources and commitment to the education sector but government could not afford more pay increases. “It cannot all go into wages and salaries. You are not dealing with the issue of qualification,” he said.

While the GTU continues to maintain that recently aborted talks with the Ministry of Education did not focus on salary issues, Mr Jagdeo said arguments against the union’s pay demands had been made in a “continuous engagement”. He said the GTU and the Ministry of Education should have been met on February 21 and the third week in every month but that arrangement fell through with the strike.

Pressed on whether those planned talks should have been about wages, the Vice President would only say “we were discussing all issues that they wrote on.” He also declined to say specifically whether the Ministry of Education is responsible for negotiating wages and salaries. “All discussions with the union are led by the Ministry of Education,” he said.

Mr Jagdeo boasted that the education sector’s budget has grown by 162 percent in four years, unprecedented in any part of the world, to build schools and buy textbooks. He said the budgetary allocation for the sector was influenced by discussions that President Irfaan Ali had last year with about 100 students.

Online teaching
In light of the GTU formally informing the Ministry of Education on Wednesday that the strike would continue indefinitely, the Guyana government was considering alternative ways of teaching students. Mr Jagdeo hinted that that approach could include distance teaching via the Internet by teachers on duty. “If this is prolonged, we may have to explore Online methods,” he said. He noted that most countries were forging ahead with a mix of Online and face-to-face classes that allows for a few specialists to deliver education through Information Technology.

He also said government has to find ways of reopening schools.

In the long-term, the Vice President said government was mulling whether to give parents a GY$600,000 grant annually to place their children in schools of choice.

Union credibility
The Vice President said the union has a “credibility gap” attributed to non-compliance with the laws governing the submission of annual financial statements and audited accounts. He repeatedly said that if government were to enforce the laws , that would lead to the de-recognition of the GTU. However, the union had said that past Executive Presidents, Registrars of Commerce and Auditors General should be blamed for non-enforcement of the laws for several decades dating back to 1989.

In his latest salvo against that union, he said the GTU’s Rule Book does not allow a sitting parliamentarian to be its General Secretary. Ms Coretta Mc Donald is the GTU’s General Secretary and APNU+AFC parliamentarian.

Teachers on the picket line have over the last days chanted that “Coretta is a teacher too”, in reaction to repeated claims by the government that the GTU strike is “political.”

Mr Jagdeo said ruling by the United Kingdom’s Privy Council, the highest court of several Caribbean Community member states, has ruled that workers who withdraw their labour could not be paid. The GTU has asked the High Court to prevent the government from