Ongoing salary negotiations between the University of Guyana (UG) administration and its staff have broken down and the workers are accusing the University Council of causing the derailment, while warning that drastic steps, including a shutdown of the institution, could result.
The UG Senior Staff Association (UGSSA) also announced yesterday that an attempt is being made to foist a workload allocation policy, initiated by Vice Chancellor (VC) Jacob Opadeyi, on teaching staff without any consultation with them and could see lecturers teaching four courses per semester.
The UGSSA is maintaining that the UG administration and the council view its staff with contempt and in response the employees are contemplating drastic steps in order to end the “eye pass.” These drastic steps could include shutting the university down if necessary, it said in a statement yesterday.
“The first step that the UGSSA has taken to address this grave assault is to immediately withdraw all UGSSA representatives from all university boards and committees,” it noted.
As a result of a situation, an emergency meeting between the UGSSA and UG Worker’s Union (UGWU) is planned for Monday.
According to the UGSSA statement, the administration and UGSSA/UGWU had been in negotiations on salary and non-salary benefits. “The unions and the administration had reached a point in the negotiations where the demands of the unions were being quantified in monetary terms,” it said, while noting that the unions participated in this process in good faith based on a request by the administration.
It added that a meeting was scheduled for Thursday to review the unions’ submissions. The administration also had to indicate its initial positions on key demands.
However, even before Thursday’s meeting, the UGSSA said it had started to notice “hostile efforts” by the UG Council. The unions went on to accuse the council of derailing the process by “attacking the bona fides of the UGSSA and, in particular, its recognition and legal certification.
In response, the UGSSA said it dispatched a letter to the VC and the UG council, calling out the attacks and maintaining its lack of certification had not been a failure on its part but rather on the administration. It also noted the wage negotiations had been ongoing for far too long.
Subsequently, Thurs-day’s meeting was cancelled. “Reason and reasonableness, however, are not the hallmarks of the UG Council. It instructed the Administration to cancel further negotiations with the UGSSA until further notice,” the association said.
Meanwhile, referring to what it has dubbed the imposition of workload policy for academic staff without consultation, the UGSSA pointed out that academic staff contracts state that any changes in the regulations governing the conditions of their service to the university could only be made following consultations with the UGSSA along with the recommendation of the Finance and General Purposes Committee. This must also be coupled with the approval of the Council, it said.
“The UGSSA was not consulted so the university cannot legally [or] unilaterally change our conditions of service,” it emphasised. It added, “Nonetheless, the VC and the Council are hell bent to impose this new policy on staff in a dictatorial manner reminiscent of Guyana’s colonial masters.”
Since 2012, wage negotiations between the academic staff and the administration had been ongoing, leading to a days of strike by lecturers and students alike before terms for resumption were brokered.
