The Guyana Public Service Union (GPSU) says it is disheartening that it still has to struggle for workers’ rights and fair treatment to be recognised by a government that claims working class credentials and credit for restoring democracy.
In its New Year message, the union the current administration made pledges that raised workers expectations but continues to flout the country’s laws, the Conventions of the International Labour Organisation and legally-binding Collective Labour Agreements. It said too the judiciary, “the guardian against abuses” seems incapable of guaranteeing rights and hard-won liberties and benefits are under threat. The union said these include the right to redress by the Public Service Appellate Tribunal, the right to due process, fair trial, the right to be heard, the agreements or the avoidance and settlement of disputes, the agreement relating to agency fees, reemployment, security of tenure, promotion on merit, equal pay for work of equal value, annual increments, union representation on the Public Service Commission and union representation on public boards.
In essence, the GPSU said, “we have neither improved upon nor guaranteed the benefits of the gains and rights that our forefathers had won for us at great sacrifice.” It said workers are “underpaid, censored and oppressed at work and have to exist on handouts arbitrarily and discriminately determined by the regime in government which has contributed to the major part of the public service workforce living in misery and poverty.”
According to the GPSU, over the years, until 1999, its approach has been to directly confront such anti-working class posture and the adversarial and uncaring conduct of the administration by calling on workers to dissent when several agreements were not honoured. However, it says that the administration is also “suffocating the union’s income and obstructing its ability to give assistance to its members” and such government tactics have moved from removal of rights and were replaced by threats and acts of discrimination, intimidation, victimization and arbitrary termination of employment.
