Dear Editor,
The workers in Guyana have lost their right to negotiate for increases and are forced to accept government handouts as in communist states. Fellow workers, the cost of living in Guyana has increased by leaps and bounds, but what have your unions done to negotiate better salaries/ wages for you? It is long past midday and no unions are in the process of actively negotiating salary increases for the year. Where are workers supposed to get the additional money to offset price increases? Salary/wage increases and not cost-of-living allowances are what are needed now, not at year end.
Workers should demand that their unions act now. The union representatives were elected to negotiate for the betterment of their workers, not to sit idly by while the government and other employers behave as if they were gods and decide to give crumbs to workers. The cost-of-living allowance and other temporary measures announced by the President are simply unacceptable. Salary increases are not temporary but permanent.
In communist countries, workers do not have any bargaining power. Please workers, do not allow yourselves to become like them. The government in Guyana has been imposing salary/wage increases for the longest while and will continue to do so unless the workers put a stop to this practice (other employers follow government’s lead in arriving at increases). What a pity.
Yours faithfully,
(Name and address provided)
