A three-man arbitration panel has been named to resolve the dispute between the Mayor and City Council and the Guyana Labour Union (GLU) over the increase in wages and salaries for 2007 and 2008 and will commence deliberations shortly.
According to a release from the Ministry of Labour issued last evening, Minister Manzoor Nadir has announced that Justice Prem Persaud will serve as the Chairperson and Clinton Williams and James Morgan will sit on the panel.
According to release, both Justice Persaud and Morgan served on a similar panel in 2001.
The ministry had written to the two parties last week advising them that it was imposing compulsory arbitration.
Nadir, having noted that the M&CC and the GLU had been at loggerheads over the increase in wages and salaries for 2007 and 2008 decided to intervene in the matter as was done before. Although both parties had decided to go to arbitration over the issue they could not agree on the members of the arbitration panel.
Mayor Hamilton Green had said in an invited comment that although he would have preferred a broader panel to deal with the more complex issues behind the wages and salaries increases, he had no difficulties with the minister’s decision.
General Secretary of the GLU Carvil Duncan had said “it is a good thing that the minister has finally intervened, something which should have happened earlier”.
He added that employees are likely to feel a little relief, though not much, that something is being done in their interest, rather than the deadlock which the council and the union was stuck at.
Duncan also said that the members of the arbitration panel should have no difficulty in providing redress since certain parts of the workforce are already receiving 10% increase for 2008 and as such the other part should receive this also. He said it should only remain for them to decide on 2007 increases.
Duncan opined that the issues for discussion should not take more than two or three sessions and as such a decision should be made soon.
