Just felt that I had to return to this vexed issue of just who – which valid, structured organisation – is justified in claiming that they – or “it” – represents Guyana’s beleaguered working–people.
Frankly Speaking, I myself feel that most of the few genuine trade unions still boasting actual, paid-up, registered members are compromised by today’s socio-economic realities. I mean, which union here can “bully” certain employers for their workers’ rights when those workers/members crave to hold on to what little appropriate employment there is left – No matter what the unfair, exploitative conditions are?
Okay, I might have been a little too extreme with that last question but do two things, if you are not aware how dire Guyana’s current workforce and its representation is. One, find out how many Guyanese workers actually belong to any bargaining unit. Then (two), discover how many unions have records of real, live, paid-up membership. You are bound to be surprised. Or would you?
It’s when recently, I heard the Guyana Trades Union Congress (GTUC) and the Federation of Independent Trade Unions of Guyana (FITUG) both sounding off on various issues – the Cariforum/ European Union Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA), union leader Lincoln Lewis’ claims and allegations and a few more political matters – allegedly on behalf of Guyana’s workers, that I decided to pen this piece.
What? A Labour Party?
Before I call on both the GTUC and the FITUG to validate their respective claims of being the representatives of our nation’s poor – meaning the wretched working-class – and bearing in mind the smallest number and most humble workers are indeed workers – let me remind the country’s youth, those students of local trade unionism and politics, that there was once an actual Labour Party in Guyana’s earliest days of unionism and Universal Adult Suffrage, when the poor first voted to choose their political representative.
And I don’t mean any “National Labour Front (NLF) of the early sixties vintage. No, I mean the British Guiana Labour Party of the early/mid-forties. Yes, there was an attempt to offer colonial Guyana working–people political leadership in the society and in the legislative corridors of power. Two prominent personalities’ names featured, both to lament the abject failure of that first “Labour” Party: Ashton Chase (still with us) – and yes, the late President and Political Pioneer, Cheddi Jagan.
Ashton Chase was the Party’s Assistant Secretary. He tells us however, that “the Party was nothing but a collection of individuals primarily seeking political honours and working together for mutual aid and assistance. It had no mass appeal whatever. Even the three of its candidates who won seats (in the 1947 General Elections) did not work as a team in the Legislative Council. The Party disintegrated shortly after the elections.”
But the young, robust dedicated working-class champion; the still rustic Cheddi Jagan who whipped a Capitalist John D’Aguiar for the Central Demerara (including villages like Kitty and Buxton and Lower East Coast Demerara Sugar Plantations), in his first Legislative stint, tried to speak for a Labour Party which was not ready.
Just hear him, sixty years ago, in the Legislative Council in January 1948: “The Party would like to express its agreement with the fact that the Elected Members of the Council are now more truly representative of the people’s views than before; but in view of Your Excellency’s Statement that racial issues were introduced into the elections, the Party would like to state that it has never been a part of its policy to practice racial discrimination or to foment racial strife …
He was to go on to outline the Party’s programme, which included Agricultural Development with more land for rural farmers, developing a Coconut Industry, trade union representation; taxes and export duties to benefit the small man; Sweepstakes and Lotteries to raise funds for poor people’s housing and the promotion of co-operative (Consumer) Stores. Alas the sincere Jagan soon found that the party merely paraded these “paper” ideas to deceive. He left explaining:
“I applied for membership (of the BG Labour Party) and was admitted to its charmed circle. (People like Daniel Debidin and others, he meant – A.A.F.) But the alliance was short-lived, shorter than I had expected. On issue after issue, the Legislative group showed that the Party was “Labour” in name only; that it was dominated by opportunists and reactionaries. The people felt betrayed; they had voted Labour but their representatives were in the main, supporting vested interests.”
Years later, in 1951, the Trades Union Council (TUC) announced that it would form another “Labour Party” for unionists. That was still-born as a vibrant People’s Progressive Party was unified in its representation of the working-class by then.
FITUG ½ – and the GTUC
A thimble-full, nutshell history shows that FITUG’s first incarnation came amidst the deterioration of government/labour relations when the Hoyte PNC government, though it had much labour-lackey affiliated support, refused to honour a number of prior negotiated agreements.
Registered No. 255 in November 1988, that first FITUG boasted some brave militant souls, unafraid to confront hostile political/governmental leadership – Dr Clive Thomas, Lincoln Lewis, Nanda K. Gopaul, Komal Chand, Christopher James and Burchmore Philadelphia. Six powerful, well-placed, well-organised unions, representing thousands, abandoned the TUC, packed with “paper unions” and a few bona-fide others.
No real reform of the traditional TUC was ever achieved, despite numerous overtures by FITUG, even after a brief return to the TUC “Old Boys” field. Enter FITUG’s re-incarnation therefore in July 2003. This was some eleven years after new governments replaced the PNC regimes. The FITUG objective now is to force TUC reform-or bust.
It’s a pity I know my allocated space here is running out. So abruptly, I ask you to join me in the following exercise: Call on the Registrar of Trade Unions to reveal the registered membership of the current GAWU-NAACIE-CCWU-GLU FITUG as against the many-membered GTUC. Let the workers and the employers have some official, up-to-date figures.
And yes, next time we’ll discuss whether it’s the leaders or the members, or both, who make-up these two groups.
A mulatto “Burning Spear”
By next week Wednesday night it should be confirmed:
Barack Obama, a mixed-race, a European-African American first-time Senator could be the most powerful world Leader – A USA President, come January 2009.
So, I should not emphasise his race? Okay, but I didn’t start it nor do the US and international media allow you to forget it. But just imagine that you are either an old Southern, slightly-race-conscious gentleman, or one of those Hitlerite skin-heads just held for allegedly wanting to eliminate Candidate Barack and other Afros darker than him. I suppose you and your racist soul just can’t take it! It’s all too much!
Obama in the White House? “Obama?” Not even an English surname like King, Young, Jackson? African name from the African continent? From the land of Jomo “Burning Spear” Kenyatta, Kenya? (Could he not have taken his mother’s name, Dunham?) Then, one Website says that his middle name is Hussein! (Islamic/ Arabic derivatives in the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) White House!?) That website further informs that after the Kenyan student assisted the Kansas-born young lady to produce Barack – (they had met in beautiful Hawaii, mind you) – the very African father and very white mother parted.
Now, her story and his (Barack’s) story afterwards, are bound to anger anti-mixed race persons. She upped and married an Indonesian next! Six-year old Barack actually attended a Muslim School in Jakarta for two years!?? It probably was all too much; he was soon sent back to Hawaii, USA, after a Roman Catholic school back in Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim State. You can check out all this – if it still matters. Until Wednesday …
Until
1.) So how can Obama lose? The columnist says through (i) ”undecideds” changing for McCain; (ii) through “voter fraud/ suppression” including dis-enfranchisement, equipment “malfunction,” student-voter apathy, intimidation …
2.) How did Obama clinch the Democratic nomination? Who put him there?
3.) Let’s admit it – Lethem will never now be able to even host a few hundred Brazilians all visiting at one time.
4.) What to wager whether law-enforcement could prevent the bombs and the squibs? It’s a whole society-thing too…
5.) Such familiar mediocrity at the local International 10K leg on Sunday. The “ceremonies”, I mean.
6.) Catch the Brazil-Guyana Goodwill Quiz on the Guyana Cook-Up Show on CNS TV6.
’Til next week!
Comments?
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