The National Association of Agricultural Commercial and Industrial Employees (NAACIE) is urging the Guyana Power and Light (GPL) to honour the tribunal award to reinstate the nine employees it had dismissed as its actions could lead to serious industrial turbulence. In a press release, NAACIE said GPL had accepted the Francis Carryl Tribunal Award which entailed reinstating Gladstone Cadogan, Deonarine Ramroop, Otis Jamieson, Quacy La Rose, Rawle Benjamin, Brian Seecharran, Renville Mc Bean, Quinsie Huntley and Leon Andrews and for them to be paid in full but with a 33 1/3% reduction of the calculated accumulated sum.

NAACIE said GPL had sent letters to the workers detailing the accumulated leave with the dates of return to work and it had started payment for leave passage allowance for some workers through an agreement with the current active Collective Labour Agreement between it and GPL. However, the union said, GPL had written to the aggrieved workers on Monday informing them that it intended to challenge the legal basis of the award and that it will continue to treat their employment as terminated. NAACIE said the behaviour being displayed by GPL, a public company, was dangerous and could lead to serious industrial turbulence. The union and aggrieved workers have incurred great costs to justify their innocence and will force GPL to honour the award the release said. NAACIE condemns “the GPL administration in the strongest terms for the blatant disregard of the workers rights and will leave no stone unturned to protect them.” Meanwhile, NAACIE has since received the backing of sister unions, the Clerical and Commercial Workers Union (CCWU) and the Guyana Agricultural and General workers Union (GAWU) who in separate statements have said that GPL’s failure to honour an arbitration award was a matter of great concern. The CCWU statement further said that the CCWU saw the refusal of GPL to accept the ruling of the arbitrator as one designed to cause disharmony and to undermine the effective representation NAACIE made on behalf of its nine members. The union said the company stood open to condemnation for agreeing to go to arbitration over the dismissal of the workers and then refusing to accept the award handed down by the arbitrator. “In industrial relations practices in this country, when parties in dispute go to arbitration they are in fact agreeing that the award is final and binding on the parties,” the statement explained. It noted that the company would have been the first to condemn the union if the ruling had gone against the union and it had moved to institute industrial action. CCWU said GPL’s action to refuse to accept the ruling against it was designed to provoke the union and “a blatant disrespect for the collective labour agreement it has with the union and smacks of poor industrial relations.” It also called on the company to rethink its position and accept the ruling in the interest of industrial peace within the company. GAWU in its statement said GPL’s action must be condemned without any reservation. Further it said that arbitration awards were legal instruments and it was most appalling that a state-owned company was setting this bad example.