Discontinuing the union dues checkoff is an indirect attack on freedom of assembly and association

To come to the point at once, I wish to comment on matters arising out of the teachers’ strike. I am not going to speak directly to the teachers’ strike, as all observations on that will be deemed political. Given the environment of struggle of the Guyana Teachers’ Union, certain troublesome circumstances have emerged.

Why has the government taken the extreme measure for discontinuing the dues checkoff for the teachers’ union? The dues checkoff, for those unfamiliar, is where government or business agrees with trade unions to collect the union dues out of union members’ salaries for such certified and acknowledged labour formations. Indeed, this is no different from the current convention where an employer is authorised by an employee, unionised or otherwise, to deduct and pay other personal expenses owed to other organizations.

Have the teachers’ union called a riot or insurrection? This suggests a lack of balance in important organs of the state. The whole membership of the teachers’ union is being punished now because apparently the teachers’ union is officially on strike. This is repression and can be called by no other name. This government has been accused of many things. I have refrained from joining some of the accusations. I know the PPP better than anyone else, including members of the PPP and the president himself. I will not jump into the fray because of the prejudicial views held by large sections of the community on what I have to say.

But we cannot escape the fact that this is a repressive move against the Guyana Teachers’ Union. And that opinion is strengthened by the fact that as I have heard since, the Public Service Union is also under the same discipline. In this instance, repression of the dues checkoff, even though they are not on strike. The Public Service Union had taken the stance they wish to negotiate with strength their next contract. The Government by abolishing the dues checkoff, has in effect decertified them and said ‘negotiate on behalf of who? You have no members.’

The checkoff system and the union shop are the devices won by working people in Guyana through their own local and international struggles donkeys’ years ago. I am inviting observers to see what is going on now and the matters applied on workers by elected millionaires as the means these people are using to discredit political opponents.

It is interesting that these arguments about the right of organization began soon after the certified elections of 2020 when some new doctrines about the right to engage in negotiations began to be proclaimed, in spite of the well-known principles laid down in the Teemal court case. I have argued before, and argue now again, in all my well-known lunacy, that so far as Guyana is concerned, the right to negotiate can be argued to be a fundamental right, not effectively suspended by the wealthy in power who want to bring workers to their knees.

As a well-known wayside lawyer, fully uncertified, I want to alert working people at home and throughout the Caribbean, as well as in Venezuela and Haiti, that what the government of Guyana is doing now is an indirect attack on the fundamental right described as ‘freedom of assembly and association.’

Finally, let me just record, for general information, that I am aware of what happened in 1998 when all the global economic stars aligned in a manner as to bring about success in the international struggle for debt forgiveness, culminating in shaming the rich Western countries from collecting further debt payments from debt-distressed poor countries. Guyana was fortunate to be one of the first four countries to be identified and the rich creditor nations insisted that after a decade of falling real public sector wages Guyana’s public sector workers should benefit from the financial resources about to be released by the debt write-off.

In fact, the creditor nations went further and inserted a clause in the agreement to the effect that “wages in the public sector should be brought to within 10 percent of the median level in the private sector”. The then PPP government was prepared to honour this clause in the breach, preferring instead to precipitate a general public sector strike. The parallel to today’s teachers’ strike is stark in that whereas in 1998 the funds to pay the public servants

were coming from a debt write-off, today the funds are coming from a burgeoning petroleum sector, the common element being identical players in recalcitrant PPP administrations.

Those who are pushing the working people toward a state of defencelessness and beggary should spend some more energy in the face of Venezuela and ExxonMobil in putting the most favourable interpretation on the imperfect laws left to the present generation. I am sure there are flaws here and there not fully explained in my argument. I am willing to assist in clarifying claims which others want to challenge.