Teachers’ strike

The Guyana Teachers Union has called on teachers to strike from tomorrow unless there is a favourable response from the Ministry of Education and other relevant authorities to its proposals for salary increases and non-salary benefits. According to GTU General Secretary Coretta McDonald the union made a submission to the government in 2020, which was to cover the years 2020 to 2023, but up until now no response has been forthcoming.

The GTU, she said, then wrote the Ministry of Labour requesting that that ministry act as a mediator if the two sides were not able to sit and negotiate. After fourteen days with no response to this letter either, a second one was dispatched, this time asking the Ministry to select an arbitrator from a list of names which the union would provide. This is the ultimate stage in the negotiation process. When this letter too was ignored, the GTU tried to engage the Ministry of Education again, but to no avail, and it was at this point that industrial action was decided on.

It was following the strike announcement that the Ministry of Labour bestirred itself to request the letters be resent, because the originals had been misplaced. The union obliged, following which the Ministry explained that they had not responded to the letter because the GTU was engaged with the Ministry of Education.

Labour Minister Joseph Hamilton then went on social media to accuse the executive of the union of manipulating teachers into participating in industrial action. He was quoted as saying: “I, as Minister of Labour, am duty bound to protect everyone who would have been intimidated and or bullied by the teachers’ union to join an illegitimate and illegal strike.” He went on to say that all teachers should recognise that joining an illegal strike made them part of an illegal action, and that they would open themselves to disciplinary action being taken against them.

The next person from the government side to have his say was Chief Education Officer Saddam Hussein, who repeated the pronouncement that the strike was illegal, adding that the Ministry had in any case fulfilled many of the union’s demands, while others were under consideration. Twelve unresolved issues were currently being examined for their practical implementation and sustainability, he said in an open letter to teachers, while of the 41 proposals for better working conditions made by the GTU, 25 had been fulfilled in less than three years. He also listed 27 improvements to ease the burden of teachers which had not been requested by the union, but which had been instituted by the Ministry in any case.

The CEdO, a purportedly neutral public servant, also infected his letter with a political com

ment by saying the union was being “unduly influenced” by its General Secretary who served as an MP for the main opposition. It is an allegation which had reinforcement from an undeniably political source in the form of Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo, who criticised Ms McDonald’s leadership (in fact Mr Mark Lyte is the GTU President) and cited political motives as having triggered the strike call.

Ms McDonald’s more recent dual role has fuelled the government’s accusations that the union is a political organisation, never mind that GAWU has been a political organisation for decades, although nowadays it negotiates in its members’ interest. Similarly, whatever the government might think, Ms McDonald’s work representing teachers goes back nearly two decades, and it is only in very recent times that she has been accorded a political label by the government and by Mr Jagdeo.

Leaving that aside for the moment, Mr Hussain is being somewhat less than precise about the character of the negotiations between his Ministry and the union. While professional matters come well within Education’s ambit, and as he has stated there are no doubt successes on that front, it is in no position to negotiate salary increases and multiyear agreements. His own Minister, Ms Priya Manickchand, has been at pains in the past to stress that fact. “As you are aware the Ministry has never negotiated [multi-year agreements], it’s always been from a level of Office of the President,” she was quoted as saying a few months ago.

There were meetings last year on that subject, although there was an early one on which this newspaper reported where no representatives from Finance were even present. Be that as it may, no progress was made in the negotiations, and eventually President Irfaan Ali short-circuited everything by announcing he was going to meet the teachers himself to get an idea of what was needed. This development did not sit well with the GTU, which rightly saw it as a tactic to impose across-the-board increases.

Having met senior and head teachers at State House in October 2023, on November 9th the President announced a $25,000 bonus for all public servants, including teachers, in addition to which various allowances to some categories of teacher would be given while all graduate teachers would be moved to the maximum of the scale they currently occupied. A 6.5% across-the-board increase for public servants, again including teachers, was announced at the end of the year.

The bonus apart, the increase was given in defiance of the labour law, in defiance of the Constitution and in defiance of the international labour protocols to which Guyana is signatory. Furthermore, whatever the nature of the engagements between the union and the Ministry of Education, and whether or not they are ongoing, the government in the form of the Office of the President has not been negotiating for months on salaries and multi-year agreements. During the period when it was doing so in the first half of last year, no results were forthcoming. Does the President really expect the union now to accept without question his deliberate subversion of the collective bargaining process?

And as for Mr Hussain and his list of the Ministry’s no doubt commendable achievements in improving the conditions for teachers, it does not obviate the need for collective bargaining on wages and salaries.

Which brings us to the politicisation of the issue. Vice President Jagdeo has been reported as saying that the proposed strike reflected the duplicity of elements in the GTU and APNU+AFC, being purely political in nature and devoid of genuine concern for the grievances faced by teachers. It was an indirect reference to the General Secretary, although his attitude to the union and by implication her too was quite different five years ago.

It is not as if the teachers had better treatment under the coalition government than the present one; they did not, and as a consequence they went on strike in 2018. On that occasion, speaking in his capacity as Leader of the Opposition, Mr Jagdeo accused the then government of negotiating with the GTU in bad faith, and said his party supported the teachers. “This is not a political strike although they are trying to make it like that. Their [teachers’] demands are legitimate. If they [government]

cannot meet all of the demands, they need to engage. The teachers have been crying out for engagement,” he was quoted as saying in a press conference of September that year.

He went on to observe that the teachers had been “callously misrepresented” by government and rather than sit and negotiate the administration had been confrontational. He also remarked that he found it strange that President Granger at his recent press conference had said government and the GTU were not negotiating a multi-year agreement, rather only one dealing with 2018.

If the 2018 strike was not political, why does Mr Jagdeo insist it is political this time around? And if teachers’ demands were legitimate in 2018, why are they not legitimate now? And if the government should have been sitting and negotiating in 2018, why won’t the current government do it now? And if the government should not have been confrontational in 2018 rather than negotiating, what justifies its confrontational approach now? And if then President Granger could be criticised for not negotiating a multi-year agreement, rather than one for a single year, i.e. 2018, why is there no negotiation for a multi-year agreement ongoing now?

Who, in other words, is making the issue a political one?

In 2018, the teachers came out in substantial numbers. We will have to wait and see how they respond tomorrow.