Govt reluctant to negotiate unrealistic wage demands with opposition-aligned trade unions- Jagdeo

Last Updated on Thursday, 9 November 2023, 20:18 by Denis Chabrol

Mr. Bharrat Jagdeo.

The Guyana government appears reluctant to engage in collective bargaining with recognised trade unions that make unrealistic demands for wage and salary increases and are aligned to the opposition, Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo indicated Thursday.

“When you look at it, they make some outrageous demands: ‘Oh, we want a hundred percent increase, we want 50 percent increase. In the whole period under APNU (A Partnership for National Unity), they didn’t get that and they’re arguing for a 50 percent increase now,” he told a news conference.

The GTU’s proposal calls for a 25 percent across-the-board increase in salary for 2019, and 20 percent for every other year (2020, 2021, 2022, 2023) be granted to all categories of teachers\teacher educators for the years 2019-2023.  The opposition parties had last November called for salary increases ranging from 25 to 100 percent, while the Guyana Public Service Union (GPSU) is asking for a 50 percent hike.

His position came amid fresh concerns by the Guyana Teachers’ Union (GTU) and the Guyana Public Service Union (GPSU) about government’s imposition of salary increases and allowances instead of those emerging out of negotiations. “The Union is also reminding the Government of Guyana, as the largest employer, that the Laws of Guyana must be respected in its entirety to the effect that collective bargaining with workers representatives must be enforced before such announcements are made. As the largest employer in the Country with the responsibility of guiding the enactment of laws in the Legislature the Government should seek to set an example for other employers rather than its current posture,” the union said on Thursday in response to the announced increased salaries and allowances for graduate teachers as well as cost-of-living bonuses to government workers, pensioners and the disabled. President Irfaan Ali also said that he would very shortly announce salary increases for 2023.

Referring to the GTU General Secretary, Coretta Mc Donald, who is also an opposition A Partnership for National Unity+Alliance For Change (APNU+AFC) parliamentarian, he said she and similarly associated persons “want to politicise this and weaponise the GTU to be pro-APNU and to push APNU’s demand.” He said Ms Mc Donald had gone to him when he was Opposition Leader, trying to get him to speak up on a number of issues because APNU was not meeting with them.  “It’s ideal if you can work with a union that has teachers’ interests at heart,” he said.

Pressed on whether the negotiation process should go ahead regardless of the trade unionists’ political persuasion in keeping with the law and the recognition of those unions, Vice President Jagdeo did not respond to that question but said nothing prevents a government from granting wage and salary increases. “There is nothing that precludes a government, like in this case, like the President meeting the people; he made it clear…,” he said. President Irfaan Ali, after a meeting with a select group of teachers from across Guyana, had publicly said that that engagement was not a negotiation.

He stressed that government must deliver to workers, even in the face of steep demands by trade unions. “My point is we are interested in working with representative bodies but we are not going to abdicate our responsibility to citizens of this country. We are not going to do that,” he said.

Mr Jagdeo also said that public sector workers received GY$37 billion more per year from 2020.

Touching on the political affiliation of the opposition, he described veteran Guyanese trade unionist and General Secretary of the Guyana Trades Union Congress, Lincoln Lewis as someone who is a “rabid anti-PPP person and the entire TUC has been converted into that.” Among the resources persons to the GTUC, he said, are the entire APNU and People’s National Congress leadership. “You think they’re interested in engagement- the TUC.”

In relation to the GPSU’s similar concerns about the absence of collective bargaining, the Vice President said that union and the People’s Progressive Party Civic-led administration were in communication. “I am aware that there have been exchanges of correspondence. I can’t tell you detail here but, again, the demands are outrageous that they didn’t make in the years of APNU.

He did not subscribe to the view that government had negotiated with the PPP-aligned Guyana Agricultural and General Workers Union (GAWU) in favour of workers of the state-owned Guyana Sugar Corporation (GUYSUCO). He said the GY$250,000 grant each to the 7,000 sugar corporation workers who were retrenched by the APNU+AFC was not cleared with GAWU. “We did not. We are government. That’s a public corporation,” he said.