Let’s get one thing straight. However and whenever the teachers’ strike ends, the lesson learned will include the fact that around here nothing really changes, and the maxim that talk is cheap truly applies.
Despite proclaiming themselves as working class, successive governments have shown time and again that this definition is all style and no substance. There’s a ‘it’s my way or the highway’ stance that manifests in how those in authority treat any individual or group who dares to challenge what they wish to maintain as the status quo. There is also such an abominable pomposity in assuming one is right all of the time, or in wanting people to believe this. So many of our leaders wear this much too well.
As this country’s largest employer, the government should be leading by example in its engagements with its employees’ representatives. How else is it going to be able to insist that other employers observe this country’s labour laws? Oh right, it has not done so recently.
Lest we forget, back in 2009, the government of the day had allowed the RUSAL subsidiary, the Bauxite Company of Guyana Inc to run roughshod over its workers and their representative, the Guyana Bauxite and General Workers Union. That company’s awful actions included firing workers striking for better wages and derecognising the union.
The arbitrary awarding of minimal pay hikes to public servants without communicating with their unions, perfected during the Bharrat Jagdeo administration, has become the go-to method for governments wishing to ignore and/or punish workers’ representatives. It is a well known fact that the average public servant, nurse, and teacher would rather not go on strike. Industrial action is a much more difficult undertaking than being on the job one is trained to do. It can be fractious and even dangerous as has been proven in past strikes in this country. It is preferable then for workers to have their demands negotiated and settled around a table.
It is also factual that people struggling to put bread on their tables are thankful for a payout that appears during or near the Christmas season and this has been the modus operandi employed by at least the past four governments on both sides of the divide. However, without collective bargaining, workers’ other needs, especially the improvement of poor working conditions, are not addressed and they return to the doldrums right after that money has been spent.
The practice of concluding multi-year agreements is supposed to correct this annual wizardry practised around workers’ emoluments. Such agreements also allow both the worker and the employer some amount of breathing space and both sides can budget more effectively over a three or five-year period. Obviously, this should be the preferred method of addressing the issue, but perhaps that is too simplistic.
Not to belabour the point, as it has been made in this column before, but politics, grudges, and vindictiveness are what stand in the way of putting communication skills to work for the benefit of the teachers and by extension the children of this nation. Everyone involved should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves, if it was indeed the case that politicians still have the capacity to feel embarrassed. That, sadly, is an outdated concept. What they are very adept at is speaking out of both sides of their mouths as the situation dictates.
As a case in point, the leader of the opposition in 2018, current Vice President Jagdeo, was quite vocal on teachers’ behalf while they were on strike. At a press conference on August 30, 2018, following a meeting he had with then president David Granger, he had said, “… It has been quite a while that the teachers have been waiting to get this matter resolved. I think it is in the interest of Guyana that we secure these multi-year contracts, so you don’t have to go through the hassle of negotiation on an annual basis and I believe that there is money to fund a lot of what the teachers have been asking for.” Mr Jagdeo had then gone on to break down in monetary terms, just how the Granger administration could fund the teachers’ demands, coming up with some $5.1 billion that could be moved from other budget line items. Considering that this is five years later, when the government has far more resources at its disposal, there is a blatant amount of hypocrisy in Mr Jagdeo not advising President Irfaan Ali along the same lines.
For his part, the President has asked teachers to be patient, while repeating that their strike is political. How specious then is President Ali’s ‘One Guyana’ mantra when he cannot be bothered to try and persuade his ministers to meet with their own countrymen on an issue that is both negotiable and resolvable via communication. One can only come to the sad conclusion that the government has deliberately chosen to be intransigent with the teachers and their union and have pointed them to ‘the highway’. How very disappointing indeed.
