It appears that after several years there has been some meaningful movement in the matter of the much wished-for negotiations in the matter of wages and salaries increases for Public Servants. If that is so – and we have had no definitive confirmation on the matter by either the government or the Guyana Public Service Union (GPSU) – it would not only represent a significant advancement arising out of the APNU+AFC administration’s pre-elections promise to address the long-overdue issue of wages and salaries levels in the Public Service but would also signal a welcome return to an acceptable framework for government/public service negotiations within the framework of the collective bargaining process.
The absence, for years, of that framework, had been an unseemly blot on industrial relations practice in Guyana which, ultimately – and in more ways than one – has had a ruinous effect on the Public Service and, by extension, on the quality of the services offered by the state. Some might even extend the argument to contend that shortcomings like patent indifference to duty, inefficiency and corrupt practices, all of which have manifested themselves in the Public Service, have been the inevitable offspring of the political hijacking of the Public Service and the insistence by politicians that rather than serve the interests of the people it, instead, be pressed into service as servants of the political regime of the day.
What had also happened, in effect, was that the highhandedness of the method applied by government in allocating salary increases in the traditional Public Service – an insulting periodic handout determined by the political administration- had essentially brought both proper industrial relations practice as well as the institution of the Public Service into a condition of near complete disrepute. Simultaneously, and to serve its own ends, government had cynically proceeded to create a near parallel Public Service underpinned by contract-driven recruitment and which, among other things, set preferential salary levels that went even further in eroding the image of the traditional Public Service. It amounted to the worst form of hijacking of an important institution of the state.
Over time and inevitably, the essence of a diminished Public Service came to be symbolized in demeaning ‘Christmas-time’ five per cent handout distributed in an environment of resignation on the part of the recipients and against the backdrop of union representation that had long ceased to make even the slightest difference.
Some of the evidence of the price which the Public Service has had to pay came out during the recently concluded hearings of the Public Service Commission of Inquiry which told graphic tales of both individual victimization and wholesale hijacking of the Public Service in a manner that shamelessly jettisoned the principles of fairness and neutrality and rendered the entire system completely accountable to political dictates of the day, so that, for example, the appointment (and control) of Permanent Secretaries, effectively the Chief Executive Officers of Ministries, ceased, in large measure, to be the purview of the Public Service Commission (PSC) and fell under the control of a well-placed political personage, in the instance of the previous political administration, the Head of the Presidential Secretariat.
One might add that many of those contracted Permanent Secretaries still occupy their positions under the present administration, a circumstance which may well have nothing to do with their respective levels of competence or lack thereof. What it does, however, is to provide a sobering reminder of the need to remove some still existing anomalies in the Public Service including the erosion of the authority of the office of the Public Service Commission as an instrument that seeks to safeguard the neutrality of the Public Service.
If the outcomes of the work of the Public Service Commission of Inquiry can undo all of the myriad anomalies and transgressions that have transpired in the Public Service over the years then it would have been more than worth whatever investment has been made in the initiative by the present administration; though it is certain that the extent of the ‘injury’ to both the state and to individuals, that is, Public Servants who have either been politically victimized or cheated out of entitlements over the years cannot be compensated for.
However, an important hurdle would now appear to have been crossed. Whereas it seemed, just a few weeks ago, that the restoration of a negotiating framework for determining wages and salaries levels in the Public Service would have to await the full and final completion of the Report of the Commission of Enquiry and its submission to the President, it now appears that government has agreed to have the wages and salaries negotiations begin before the Report is completed. Setting aside the useful progress – even if only in the matter of creating a convivial negotiating environment – that can be made in the talks even as the Commission wraps up its work, the very fact that government and the Union can finally return to an acceptable negotiating framework for setting wages and salaries in the Public Service would be a significant leap forward for the restoration of the principles of collective bargaining.
