Last week’s announcement that vendors in the city’s municipal markets are to become unionized is an indication that working people in Guyana are beginning to bestir themselves against tendencies by institutions in authority to marginalize them and deny them their rights, General Secretary of the Guyana Trades Union Congress (GTUC) Lincoln Lewis has said.
“I believe that the creation of a union for vendors at this time points to the fact that the vendors are faced with challenges to their livelihoods, serious ones and that they believe that a collective, organized approach to solving those problems is necessary at this time,” Lewis told Stabroek Business.
And the veteran trade unionist told this newspaper that he believed the creation of a union was a shot in the arm for the trade union movement as a whole. “Frankly, the more we can expand unionized labour across the country the more secure the entire labour force will be,” Lewis said, adding that the GTUC would “unhesitatingly welcome” the new union to its fold. “Frankly, I hope that they can unionize vendors across the country,” Lewis added.
On Monday, former GTUC official and current President of the new Guyana Market Vendors Union (GMVU) Eon Andrews told Stabroek Business that the “whole objective” behind the creation of the union was “to ensure that our market vendors are given their due and that their rightful place in our society, as citizens and entrepreneurs, is recognized and respected.” Andrews said that the new union will be seeking to build a membership base that is strong enough to throw up the kind of leadership that will defend the rights of vendors “more than adequately” and will place them on a level playing field with the people who manage the municipalities.
Stabroek Market stallholder Carol Carter, who is the Vice President of the newly-formed trade union, said she believed the creation of the union will contribute to the effective mobilization of the vendors in times when such mobilization is needed.
According to Andrews, in the period ahead, the newly created union will be taking its message to vendors across the municipal markets in the capital as well as those outside Georgetown. “Our vision is to create a strong institution capable of effectively representing the interests of those who vend for a living including vendors trading on the streets in the capital and elsewhere,” he said.
“With regard to street vendors, the answer is yes, we are seeking to unionize them too. We believe that street vending is part of the social and economic culture of towns and cities across the world and, frankly, we are unhappy with the fact that such vendors do not get their due here in Guyana.”
Andrews said that while the newly created union understood the need for collaboration between the municipalities and vendors in the matter of the management of street trading he believed there were “numerous examples of incidents in which street vendors were taken entirely for granted.”
Commenting on the removal earlier this year of a number of vendors from the Stabroek Market Square, Andrews said he did not believe that good order in the capital could be maintained “only at the expense of street vendors.”
Accordingly, he told Stabroek Business that the new vendors union was “thoroughly against” the current alternative trading arrangements made by City Hall to accommodate the displaced vendors. “The current arrangements resemble what some of the vendors are calling a ‘Jurassic Park.’ Those arrangements are not suitable for effective trading and the truth is that the outcome has been a loss of earnings for those vendors. Perhaps the powers that be may wish to tell us whether denying the working people of the capital the right to support their families is part of the idea here,” Andrews asked.
Lewis, meanwhile, said he believed that “an organized force for market vendors” will help to draw attention to the “many difficulties and challenges facing ordinary workers and focus attention on the necessity for organized representation.
I believe that the formation of this union points to a deficiency in the labour movement that has weakened the whole culture of effective representation, which, of course, is what the labour movement is all about.
Hopefully, the creation of the vendors union can help refocus attention on the importance of worker representation in Guyana.”
