Attorney General disagrees with Court of Appeal’s refusal of State’s application on teachers’ union dues

Last Updated on Wednesday, 22 January 2025, 18:16 by Writer

–Teachers Union failed to provide membership information

Attorney General Anil Nandlall on Tuesday night questioned the Guyana Court of Appeal’s decision not to grant an application for a stay of the High Court’s order that the government must continue to deduct union dues from teachers and remit them to the Guyana Teachers’ Union (GTU).

While stating he was not casting any aspersions, the Attorney General suggested that he believed that the State would have lost its case that was presided over by Justice of Appeal Dawn Gregory Barnes. “I am not surprised by the ruling because I advised the Cabinet that the government doesn’t have a track record of winning cases in the Guyana Court of Appeal,” he said on his social media programme “Issues In The News”.

He said he was relying on statistics to support his contention.

He said Justice Barnes found that there were good grounds of appeal with a likelihood of success. The appeal raised several crucial issues of law but found “strangely” that the justice of the case doesn’t warrant a stay to be granted.

“Many, many authorities say that once you establish that you have good grounds of appeal and that your appeal has good prospects of success, that is enough this judgement ought to find that the justice of the case did not merit a stay to be granted,”

The Attorney General said the State would, by way of procedure, appeal Justice Gregory’s decision before three judges of the Guyana Court of Appeal before going to the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) “where we eventually would like to go.”

He said Justice Gregory, as a single judge in the Guyana Court of Appeal, should have followed a previous decision of that court that states that the State did not violate any law. Mr Nandlall reminded that the Guyana Public Service Union (GPSU) had already lost a High Court case that had challenged a decision by the government in 2000 to stop automatically deducting union dues on behalf of public servants who were union members. Mr Nandlall said the High Court’s decision that the government had no legal duty to provide that voluntary service to the union and should itself do so was subsequently upheld by the Guyana Court of Appeal which included Justice Gregory.

“I thought that the law was clear, it having been settled by the very Court of Appeal,”, adding that the CCJ only recently reiterated the importance of the doctrine of following previous decisions.

He admitted that government stopped automatic deduction of teachers’ union dues since February to December, 2024, but there was no evidence that the move had affected the GTU. “The union has every right and responsibility to go and uplift union dues from its members,” Minister Nandlall said.

GTU’s Attorney-at-Law, Darren Wade on Tuesday said Justice Gregory highlighted that the GTU would suffer undue prejudice if the stay were granted, stating that the balance of justice lies in favour of the Union.

In rubbishing accusations by the GTU that the government violated the High Court order by refusing to automatically deduct and transfer members’ union dues, Mr Nandlall said it was the union that failed to supply “verified and certified” documentation of its members for confirmation and supply to the Ministry of Finance. “The contention, now, that is being made in the public domain that the government is violating the court order is baseless, is unfounded and is malicious,” Mr Nandlall said.

He said the Ministry of Education’s Shannielle Hoosein-Outar wrote GTU President Dr Mark Lyte on March 14, 2024, asking for the names of GTU members in order to comply with High Court Judge, Sandil Kissoon’s then interim order of February 2024. Mr Nandlall said Dr Lyte responded on March 19 telling Ms Hoosein-Outar that the GTU was not required to submit any information about its members before the deduction of dues ceased in February and that the Education Ministry should use teacher data in its possession to comply with the order.

“That is not what the judge ordered,” Mr Nandlall said. He also stated that the Permanent Secretary wrote Dr Lyte again on April 8 informing him that “your failure to supply the information requested has so far caused a delay in compliance with the order of Justice Kissoon.

“We need, therefore, to verify against the ministry’s record, the record of your membership, to ensure that no unauthorised deductions are made and even more importantly that there is due compliance with the order,” he said, also stating that a return to the old way of deducting the dues might not amount to compliance with the order.

The Attorney General cautioned that if wrong deductions were made from non-members’ salaries, government could be cited for violating a law, even possibly a criminal act because it is fraudulent conversion.

Chief Education Officer of the Ministry of Education, Saddam Hussain is on record as saying that government stopped the deduction of the union dues because the union had failed to submit its accounting records to the Auditor General of Guyana since 1989 and the Registrar of Trade Unions since 2004. “In the face of this glaring lack of transparency and accountability on the part of the Union—moreover, in respect of the lack of accountability in relation to Union dues which the Government was deducting gratuitously from the salaries and transmitting same to the Union—coupled with the Government’s own legal duty under various statutory provisions and under the doctrine of good and accountable governance, the Government decided to review its decision of continuing this gratuitous service to the GTU,” he said.