Dear Editor,
The Office of the President is once again set to arbitrarily impose a wage hike on the Guyana Public Service Union, (GPSU). It is imperative that the GPSU rejects this wage imposition. If the GPSU does not reject this across-the-board wage imposition it runs the risk of becoming irrelevant and this would be the beginning of the end of trade unionism as we know it in Guyana.
Negotiations are part of the bargaining agency of trade union practice and the government must respect this. If negotiations do not go the way the government expects, it cannot end the negotiation process at will and impose its determined wage increase.
Furthermore, the government cannot be “pleased over the very enlightened manner in which these talks were conducted,” according to the Office of the President statement, and then decide it was no longer going to participate in the talks. This means government is playing politics with workers’ livelihoods. What is also puzzling is the OP statement as reported in the Stabroek News, that, “it had not lost sight of the fact that workers expected to receive wage and salary increases for this year in a timely manner and as such decided to act”. What is the timely manner? And who determines what the timely manner is and what amount in increases workers deserve? Workers, by democratic means, gave the GPSU the mandate to negotiate on their behalf. This means that these officials must act in the workers’ best interest to get the best deal. So, the timely manner is determined when both sides are satisfied. In the absence of an agreement, the process goes to third-party arbitration. The government as employer cannot be arbitrator.
A nine per cent increase is hardly worthy of satisfactory consideration when one takes into account that there has been a 13 per cent increase in inflation, plus approximately 19 per cent increase in prices of food items since the introduction of VAT. In addition, workers in the public service are grossly underpaid and according to the GPSU, there is a wage deficit for 2002-6. The government has recorded significant increases in VAT revenue and therefore has the ability to pay the reasonable GPSU demand of 14 per cent. It is my opinion that the GPSU should have demanded 21 per cent and then it might have received its 14 per cent or more.
What is not lost upon observers is the fact that the Guyana government does not treat workers in the sugar industry and their representative, the Guyana Agricultural and General Workers Union (GAWU), in this manner. The government is courting a confrontation with the GPSU and it is important that Patrick Yarde, the president of GPSU takes note. Workers cannot continue to be treated with the sort of contempt that the government has shown to public servants over the years. The government must realize this is an important sector, and the GPSU must act as such.
Yours faithfully,
Dennis Wiggins
