Latest update March 29th, 2024 12:59 AM
Apr 05, 2018 News
Before the end of the current school year, public school teachers should see the signing into effect a new multi-year salary agreement package complete with a pay hike and other deserving benefits. The culmination of the April to July school term will mark the end of the school year.
Once the relevant representatives of both the Education Ministry and the Guyana Teachers Union [GTU] affix their signatures to the agreement it will become effective allowing for teachers to reap the associated benefits.
Although approval was required at the level of Cabinet, the multi-year package is one that saw negotiations ongoing for close to one year by a specially constituted Task Force. This of course followed on the heels of threats of strike action from the GTU in retaliation to the slow pace of addressing a pay increase for teachers.
In recognition of the dilemma, President David Granger himself instructed that the Task Force be established to fast-track the teachers’ salary issue. Comprised of government and union representatives, the Task Force commenced the process of negotiations.
Speaking of the process recently, GTU General Secretary, Ms. Coretta McDonald said, “At first when we sat there, we were two sides; we were two separate entities but after the first week we recognised that education is everybody’s business and we could no longer see ourselves as two sides with one fighting for this and the other fighting for something else.”
In fact, she said, “In order to boost our education system and to shout about an educated nation, we had to ensure that the persons who are facilitating the process are first comfortable and when they are comfortable then we can make demands of them.”
McDonald said that the GTU recognised from the inception of the negotiations that only if those involved in the process were motivated to work that the desired outcome could be forthcoming.
This approach, McDonald said, saw the two sides becoming a single negotiating team with teachers’ interest as the focus. “We were able to look at the possibilities – long, medium and short term, with regards, especially to finances,” McDonald related.
This was particularly important, the GTU General Secretary said, to ensure that the negotiations did not take a direction whereby “the government can do this, or we demand that the government should do this when we didn’t know for sure that they would be sustainable for one or two years.”
McDonald disclosed that after taking into consideration a proposal that GTU would have submitted, as well as the preliminary report from a Commission of Inquiry [COI] into the education system, draft recommendations were presented to the Task Force.
“Of course those recommendations are going to be based on salaries, benefits and how we can improve the education system generally,” McDonald asserted.
The initial proposal presented by the GTU was for a 40 percent across the board increase for teachers for 2016; 45 percent increase for last year and 50 percent for this year and the following two years (2019-2020) for all categories of teachers.
This publication however has not been able to ascertain whether the proposed percentage has been retained following the negotiations. There were reports; however, that suggested that the union, during the negotiation, was required to justify the percentage outlined in its proposal.
Meanwhile, teachers reportedly have even more to look forward to this year. This publication has been informed that during the new school year, which starts in September, public school teachers should be eligible for senior promotions.
Just last month, GTU President, Mr. Mark Lyte, shared his view on the promotion situation pointing out, “Teachers deserve to be promoted at the soonest possible time.”
The Teaching Service Commission [TSC], which is the primary body tasked with the promotion of public school teachers, was dissolved towards the end of last year leaving in limbo promotions for teachers for a two-year period.
However, a new Commission was appointed in February of this year and its members were recently sworn in. According to Lyte, “we are happy to see a new Commission in place because since September of last year we hadn’t a Commission.”
The lack of a Commission, according to Lyte, would have essentially stalled the promotion process for teachers.
Public school teachers were last elevated to senior positions early last year. However, those promotions were for the year 2015.
This was due to concerns relating to the promotion process that had caused it to be a matter for the court. In 2015, the union had moved to the court to have the TSC and the School Boards review their preliminary lists of senior promotions. Because of that court matter, the 2015 promotions were held up and were only fast-tracked last year despite the court’s ruling towards the end of 2016 in favour of a review called for by the GTU.
According to Lyte, while the union is anxious to see the Commission get started on new promotions, it is accepting of the fact that “it will have a lot of work to do in order to make that possible.”
He said, “Our concern is that several teachers within the system have not had a chance to be promoted within the last two years. For almost three years some teachers have not benefitted from promotions and so we would like the Commission to bear that in mind…we are not laying any blame because we recognise this Commission is new and will need to settle in before the work can really get done.”
THIS IDIOT TELLING GUYANA WE HAVE NO SAY IN THE 50% PROFIT SHARING AGREEMENT WE HAVE WITH EXXON.
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