Introduction

Even as mainly organized labour assemble at their various points today to march in silent resignation, listen to flat speeches from their leaders, numb their plight and pain with music, food and liquor produced by their colleagues for the profits of the investing class, the evidence so overwhelmingly confronting their membership on this Labour Day points to a movement that is in complete crisis, their numbers in decline, their leadership in disarray, their unity in tatters, and their very survival in question. Almost every issue that has faced workers recently, be it  RUSAL’s attempt at union-busting; the teachers’ union imaginary giant leap; government’s withdrawal of Critchlow Labour College subvention; the de facto abolition of collective bargaining in the public sector; the CLICO-induced six billion dollar hole in the NIS financial statements, or politicking by some of the movement’s leaders, would make an excellent case study for any thesis on the Collapse of the Labour Movement in Guyana.

Yet, a country whose first two modern-day leaders came out of the bowels of the labour movement cannot find a single person with the interest and inclination to engage in such an exercise or produce a leader with the capacity to heal the rift, stem the tide, deliver …..