Sitting behind her desk at the East street office of the Postal and Telecommunications Workers’ Union (PTWU) Gillian Burton appears thoughtful rather than intimidated. Her responsibilities as the new President of the Guyana Trades Union Congress have come at a time when she is immersed in the presidency of her own union. Still, she says, she is “more than happy” to be in a position to serve the labour movement at the level of the Congress and to influence its direction.
She is unmindful of the accolade of ‘first woman President,’ preferring to be regarded simply as ‘the President’ of the Guyana Trades Union Congress. The former, she believes, is a “distinction” that may not necessarily work to her advantage.
“While I am not unmindful of the precedent, the gender accolade can easily be regarded as a kind of obligation or commitment which I am not sure I can fulfill. Part of the problem that we have had in Guyana with ‘women firsts’ is that they have not generally done much to alter the overall gender balance as far as power is concerned. Too often it is simply a matter of window dressing.”
Not that Gillian intends to have her presidency seen as a concession to women. She believes – and she says so – that the gender difference do not matter that much in the labour movement. “Women can be far more militant, determined and forthright than men and when it comes to confronting difficult issues women can bring to bear a sense of pragmatism that men sometimes find difficult to countenance.”
She is wary of the possibility that her election to the presidency of the GTUC could create “premature and unrealistic expectations” among women. “I believe that the struggle for women within the labour movement still has a fair way to go and that my election to the presidency of the movement does not necessarily mark a turning point in that struggle.”
For the time being at least the new President of the GTUC prefers to fashion a holistic agenda designed to embrace the movement as a whole rather than to embark on any gender crusade. It is an agenda, she says, that takes account of the doldrums into which labour has fallen, the division and marginalization of the movement over almost two decades and the loss of faith in labour by its constituency, the workers of Guyana. “The issue,” she says, “is much bigger than simply the rights of women.”
Gillian begins by looking inward rather than outward – at what she describes as the “ill-defined agenda” of a trade union movement that is “uneasy with itself and angry with those whom it perceives as its adversaries.” Just a few days ago she found herself in an open disagreement with some members of the traditionally male-dominated ‘old guard’ over the tone and content of a public statement that the GTUC was about to issue. The problem was one of style. “The labour movement cannot afford to appear angry about everything that it does. That approach accomplishes nothing. We need to leave ourselves room for engagement.”
The new GTUC President’s earliest challenge appears to repose in the decision which she says she has made “that the labour movement can no longer appear irrelevant.” The “sad fact,” she says, is that “whether we accept it or not and whatever the justification or otherwise, our protracted confrontation with government has done nothing to enhance the image of labour in the eyes of its constituency.”
Seeking to fashion a less acrimonious relationship with government is high on her agenda. It is, she says, a pragmatic step, born out of the realization that where room for dialogue does not exist little can be accomplished. She hastens to add, however, that engagement should not be interpreted to mean “rolling over” or simply “dancing to a tune” played by the political administration. “The fact of the matter is that the vast majority of unionized workers, whether they be in the traditional public service, teaching, the communication sector or the sugar industry are employed by government and we really need to ask ourselves whether we can afford to close the door to engagement with the single largest employer of labour.”
Asked whether her posture of ‘mending fences’ with government may not appear to be sign of declining militancy Gillian responds immediately. “That depends on what you mean by militancy. Is our militancy to be measured in the number of angry statements that we release or in the various threats to take action that often do not materialize? I believe that the problem here is that we have focused far too much on the employer and far too little on our own members. Our strength, our militancy, is in our members not in our media statements and in threats.”
The agenda of the new President of the GTUC envisages a sharp departure from a protracted interlude of ‘coldness’ spawned by what the Congress has said are attempts by the government to divide and destroy labour. That division, long manifested in the pressures that have been brought to bear by the Guyana Agricultural Workers Union – regarded as the industrial arm of the political administration – for a greater share of influence within the GTUC – and which eventually led to the withdrawal of GAWU from the Congress – has widened with the re-emergence of FITUG and the creation of two rival camps within the labour movement.
The division, Gillian says, has robbed the labour movement of “the collective strength that it needs to address workers issues effectively.” She regards the division of the labour movement as a tragedy that is partially of its own making. “The available evidence clearly shows that we have allowed our agenda to be dictated by considerations that are often at variance with our mission as workers’ representatives.”
Views like these are beginning to place the new President of the GTUC at odds with some of her colleagues whom, she says, have become steeped in the combative posture that has informed the relationship between labour and government for so long. “I accept that I need to define my ideas for trying to have the movement mend fences with government so that those ideas can be seen as being in the interest of the workers and the labour movement as a whole. It is a major challenge since there is a great deal of hostility in the present relationship.”
The stresses of seeking to create a new approach to engaging the government have already begun to impact on Gillian’s relationship with some of her colleagues. Traditionally it has been in the office of General Secretary rather than in the presidency of the GTUC that the real influence has reposed. The President of the movement is an elected official and the ‘turn-taking principle ‘ that has informed election to that office has ensured that no President has become too comfortable in the position. The General Secretary is an appointed officer, the de facto Chief Executive Officer of the GTUC and the most critical figure in shaping the labour agenda. General Secretaries have served for considerably longer periods than Presidents and have used their tenure to influence the direction of the movement.
Recently, an agreement was reached that public statements issued by the GTUC must have the approval of the Executive Council, a decision which Gillian believes strengthens the office of the President who will now have a greater say in the tone and content of the statements issued by the Congress. “I believe that this decision could change the general tone of what we say to the public and refashion our image to make us seem less angry about everything that we say.”
If the new President of the GTUC attaches a sense of importance to her job she is far from carried away by the office. She accepts that labour has been in decline and has lost much of its power base. “We have to start building from the ground up. Telling the workers how bad the employer is will accomplish nothing. What we have to do is to demonstrate in practical ways what labour, at the level of the individual unions, is capable of doing for its members. People need solutions not noises th
at sound like solutions.”
When you ask Gillian about the quality of the current leadership of the labour movement she ponders her answer carefully. “In the same way that the society has evolved and the conditions of the workers have evolved, so too the leadership must evolve. I believe that much of the problem with institutions in Guyana, including the trade union movement, is that people become more concerned with power than with service and responsibility. They become the institutions, make decisions that satisfy their own personal agendas and sometimes even hijack the institutions that they were elected to serve. I cannot honestly say that this has not happened in the trade union movement.”
The solution, Gillian says, lies with the workers themselves. “Part of the problem is that there has been a loss of faith in the movement even among some of the people who have remained members of trade unions. What this has meant is that they have, in some cases, simply abandoned the unions to people who have manipulated the rules and corrupted the institutions. I believe that it is important that workers be made aware of the fact that their unions have been sabotaged. This is where there is need for militancy among workers in the first place – to take back their unions. This is part of what I meant by looking inward rather than outwasrd.”
Gillian believes that employers, including the government, ignore the labour movement at their own peril. She asserts that the ‘lethargy’ that has afflicted labour has also crept in at workplaces. “It is not difficult to see that many workers, particularly in the state sector, are simply not excited about their jobs. Complaints about production and productivity overlook the fact that people are simply not motivated. Conditions of work, issues of remuneration, health and safety, family welfare among others have not been given sufficient attention. There is need for a pact between employer and employee that the workers themselves will ‘sign on’ to. Without this we are all in trouble. In the final analysis, therefore, to ignore labour or to isolate the unions is to run the risk of having the entire economy and the country collapse.”
To illustrate her point Gillian draws attention to the Guyana Agricultural and General Workers Union (GAWU) which she says “has probably had more industrial disputes with Guysuco in recent years than any other union has had with an employer.” She says that “what this suggests is that even the union that is favored by the government has difficulties with the employer.”
The goals that she has set herself could mean that she must walk a delicate tightrope – a balancing act between improving labour’s relationship with government and reaching out to workers whose faith in labour has diminished. She sees no other option. What she will not do, she says, is to allow the labour movement to slip further into a condition of decline and to continue to offer little more than anger and a false sense of militancy in circumstances where the difficulties facing the workers of Guyana grow more unbearable every day. “Something has to give,” she says.
