Latest update April 19th, 2024 12:59 AM
Feb 09, 2009 Letters
Dear Editor,
There isn’t any act that the PPP/C government intends to commit for which public outcry and protest will deter them. The Trades Union Recognition [Amendment] Bill is an attempt by the Government to gain absolute control of Labour’s landscape.
Prior to the passing of the original bill in 1997, there were engagements and agreement among the Minister of Labour (MOL), the Guyana Trades Union Congress (GTUC) and the Consultative Association of Guyanese Industries (CAGI). The commitment made by the MOL was never honoured. On the passing of the bill, Cyril Belgrave, a PPP MP, was identified to chair the Trades Union Recognition Board (TURB). The GTUC objected to Belgrave’s appointment, as it departed from the original understanding and spirit of the law to insulate trade union recognition from party political interference.
The TURB allows unions with political connections who organised new bargaining units to receive prompt surveys and recognition. The record will show the same treatment was not meted out to the unions in the GTUC. When the GTUC unions organised workers and filed for recognition, within days of filing, an application from unions in FITUG would be submitted to the TURB seeking recognition of the said bargaining units organised by GTUC’s affiliates. FITUG’s unions’ counter applications allowed the TURB to stop the recognition process. This has been the strategy of the Government-controlled TURB to prevent unions in the GTUC from expanding.
The intent of the 2009 Amendment to the Trades Union Recognition Law is another attempt by the Government to empower FITUG, an institution resuscitated by the PPP-affiliated GAWU and NAACIE after they disagreed with the GTUC for protesting the 1999 shooting of unarmed striking public servants. These very unions make yearly pilgrimage, on 16th June, to the Enmore Martyrs Monument, to pay homage to the sugar workers, and condemn the 1948 police shooting of armed sugar workers.
As a founding member of the original FITUG, the federation activities were disbanded in 1993 when the unions returned to the GTUC, after the rules were changed to accommodate proportional representation of every union (based on size) at the decision-making tables. FITUG’s resuscitation was done without consultation of the principal founding members. This unethical behaviour is another example of the unprincipled culture characteristic of the PPP and its cohorts.
The current division in the labour movement is political, and it is engineered by the Government. The administration refuses to engage the GTUC after it instigated FITUG’s resuscitation. The Government has removed the GTUC’s representatives on state boards and commissions and replaced them with FITUG representatives. The yearly grants given to the GTUC and
Critchlow Labour College are withdrawn. On the other hand, the Government gives money to FITUG and its unions. In 2002, when bauxite was being privatized, President Jagdeo refused to engage the recognised unions because of their affiliation to the GTUC. Instead, the President instructed the formation of workers committees, and had them sign agreements that the Government never fulfilled.
These committees had no legitimate bargaining rights; as such, advantage was taken of the workers through this process, and the devastating effects still linger. As the Government continues the division and marginalisation of the trade unions, it hides behind empty calls for trade union unity — a call the Government clearly does not believe, as can be seen by its actions — a call many have bought without an understanding of the principles on which trade union unity/solidarity are grounded.
Unity has to be premised on shared principles. In the trade union community, it is built and sustained on the shared principles of liberty, justice and equality for all. If it was wrong to shoot armed sugar workers in 1948, it cannot be right to shoot unarmed public servants in 1999. If it is right to give FITUG and PPP-supported unions state funding, then it cannot be right to take away state funding from GTUC and Critchlow Labour College. If it is right to promptly proceed with recognising the PPP unions’ bargaining units, then it cannot be right to deny non-PPP unions similar treatment.
If it is right to save the pension plan of sugar workers, the Government is wrong to destroy the bauxite workers’ pension plan. If it is right to honour the PPP unions’ collective bargaining agreements, it cannot be right for the Government to refuse to honour same in non-PPP affiliated unions. If GAWU and NAACIE are allowed to negotiate for better wages and working conditions, the GPSU and other unions in the public sector must be allowed the same opportunities, rather than have the Government ignore these unions and impose wage increases on public sector workers.
In other countries — Bahamas and Trinidad and Tobago –where two federations exist, the Governments engage all the unions. In the Hoyte Administration, both GTUC and unions in FITUG were consulted on issues of national import and specific to the unions’ bargaining units. When bauxite workers struggled and won benefits, Hoyte gave those same benefits to the sugar workers, though they did not struggle for them. Hoyte’s decision was informed by the fact that both sugar and bauxite fall under the productive sector.
Recognising the rights of organised labour to representation, whenever the Government requested the GTUC to make appointments to state boards and commissions, the GTUC invited unions in FITUG and the GPSU to participate in the selection process. The GTUC appointed Seepaul Narine, General Secretary of GAWU, to fill Labour’s position of vice- chairmanship on the National Business and Labour Coalition that addresses issues of trade and competitiveness. On the Trade Union Recognition Board, the GTUC submitted names of representatives from the GPSU and FITUG unions to serve on the board.
The Jagdeo Administration does not believe in liberty, equality and justice, preferring instead the environment of injustice, inequality and the oppression of the GTUC and unions whose leaders he cannot control.
A former PPP minister said the TURB is about power. I agree. It is about the misuse of power by this Government to silence or weaken those who seek to protect workers’ gains and advance their well-being, and replace it by those comfortable using the workers’ power against them.
Lincoln Lewis
Please share this to every Guyanese including your house cats.
Apr 19, 2024
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