The first stanza of the long-awaited negotiations between the Government of Guyana and the Guyana Public Service Union (GPSU) on wages and salaries for public servants has not gone well. This newspaper’s exchanges with several have led us to the conclusion that there is a considerable even if decidedly muted disappointment over the extent of the pay increase. There is, as well, evidence of a measure of resentment over what is perceived to be the finality of the government’s offer as well as the declaration by President David Granger that – presumably whether the union accepts or otherwise – government intends to go ahead and make the payout based on its offer at the end of September.
There is an anticlimactic feel about this particular phase of the negotiations particularly when account is taken of the historic hype that has attended the public discourse on the desirability of better pay for public servants which has, for years, been an integral part of the national political agenda.
The APNU+AFC coalition it seemed, long before it entered office, had accepted as an axiom not only that public servants have been for years grossly underpaid, but that expectations of a public service that significantly raised the standard of its deliverables could not be divorced from government first conceding that meaningful wages and salaries increases were an essential prerequisite to the realization of that goal.
It was that general principle, among others, that had underpinned the setting up of the Commission of Inquiry into the Guyana Public Service. There, public servants repeatedly bemoaned inadequate pay and its cost of living consequences. Both Chairman of the Commission of Inquiry Professor Harold Lutchman and his colleague Commissioners openly conceded that the issue of a more efficient and effective public service could not be separated from the need to pay public servants better.
We must be clear about one thing. Taken in the context of what might be termed reasonable expectation the wages and salaries increase offer falls well short of what public servants might have expected. In addition, the fact that official pronouncements suggest that government wishes to put this matter behind it quickly appears to have created further resentment.
To be sure it does not seem that either public servants as as whole or the leadership of their union are in a particularly militant mood in the wake of what transpired at the negotiating table. The GPSU is clearly hedging its bets, calling for a return to the negotiating while hoping that in the fullness of time public servants will begin to make their views on the pay increase offer more public. The portents for such an eventuality do not appear particularly good at this time. Up until now, under the APNU+AFC administration as much as under its predecessor, public servants, on the whole, are still seen as loyal to their employer, more or less indifferent to their union and mindful of rocking any boats, so to speak. The union is sensitive to this which is why, at least up until now, its response to the government’s pay offer has been confined largely to rhetoric.
There is, of course, the ‘politics’ of what is perceived in some quarters as a relationship between the GPSU and the APNU+AFC administration that allows the former to see the latter as a more palatable option than the former PPP/C administration as far as the prospects for better pay for public servants are concerned. Once the government changed hands in 2015 one sensed a transformed, upbeat disposition on the part of the GPSU in respect to the likelihood of securing better pay for public servants. After all, the issue of “a living wage” for public servants and extricating public servants from the ranks of “the employed poor” had been part of the wider industrial relations narrative for years, and in opposition APNU and the AFC had appeared to buy into it. When, despite audible grumbling from public servants the GPSU kept its distance from the controversial pay increase for ministers last year, that was taken to mean in some quarters that the leadership of the union was hoping that its posture on that matter might be repaid at the negotiating table.
The union may be disappointed but it cannot pretend to be altogether surprised. Prior to the start of the pay talks it had written to President Granger asserting that remarks made by Finance Minister Winston Jordan with regard to likely pay increase expectations appeared designed to prejudice the negotiations.
Even so, and despite pronouncements by GPSU President Patrick Yarde that the government’s negotiating style had reflected scant regard for the union, as said above, there is still no evidence that it is contemplating even a remotely militant posture at this time. Apart from calling for a return to the negotiating table, the union’s General Council was not prepared to go any further than asking public servants to signal their call for a higher increase by wearing a blue ribbon. It is left to be seen whether such a ‘soft’ gesture will secure much traction with a government that has already delivered its “final” offer to public servants.
