It is just too bad that “the strike” as a weapon of workers against employers earned a lasting reputation as a political action – a rebellion, if you will – to bring down the Government in the 1960s. Before that, workers had been fighting the foreign companies – who owned everything, and who exploited them. While the colonial Government backed the foreign companies, it wasn’t directly under threat, and strikes weren’t considered as threatening its survival.
All of that changed in 1962 – 1964, when the US and Britain decided to oust the democratically elected PPP Government. They used the urban labour unions that supported the PNC to launch strikes that degenerated into ethnic riots and widespread arson, followed by a counter-strike by the PPP-affiliated sugar workers in the sugar belt. The PPP was duly ousted, and the (politicised) genie was never put back into the bottle. Ultimately, the greater losers were the workers, since their legitimate struggle to better their working conditions and wages became politically tainted.
But what made this reputation stick wasn’t just historical memory, but the actions of trade union leaders who openly identify with the political parties!! While, from one perspective, it might be seen as rational, since, when “their” party gets into Government, they might be rewarded, they were also susceptible to being ignored when the table was turned!! The classic case of this recently was when Granger – who’d been a soldier scab breaking the sugar strike in the 1960s – became President. It was clear he had a long memory – helped by his training as a historian. When he unilaterally shut down four sugar estates and threw 7000 sugar workers into the streets, it was so much for workers’ rights!!
And we reach the present strike by the Guyana Teachers Union (GTU), whose General Secretary isn’t just a card-carrying member of the PNC, but one of its more tempestuous MPs!! The PPP was scarred early on by its ouster through strike actions by the Public Servants; who, to repeat, were overwhelmingly members of the PNC, and were skittish. Even when they finally returned to office in 1992, they faced a punishing strike in 1999 by Public Service workers; which almost brought them to their knees, since it “coincided” with wider, violent PNC street protests that exploded into riots.
So, while the GTU may have a point in that the PPP Government hasn’t followed the collective bargaining agreement, they haven’t done their cause any good by the GTU leaders’ inflammatory POLITICAL statements on PNC platforms. So, where does your Eyewitness see this strike going? The subject government ministries have already dubbed the strike “illegal”, and they ain’t backing down.
The GTU’s gonna emerge broken – like the Opposition-affiliated GPSU has been. Solidarity never!!
…the Mid-East muddle
There’s so much going on in the Middle East right now that we need a guide map to help make some sense!! Since this is the Bible Belt, maybe it’ll help if we use Biblical language?? We gotta go back some 4000 years or so – yep, the fight is THAT old – when God Himself told the Israelites this was their “Promised land”. In one instance, the Amalekites crossed them and God told them to COMPLETELY wipe them out – even “sucklings”!!
In the intervening millennia, the Jews were scattered across Europe, the Middle East, and even to India. After Hitler gassed 6 million of them during WWII however, the Brits decided to have them return to the “Promised land”. Were they acting in place of God?? The trouble was that, by that time, the place was called “Palestine”, and there were Arabs living there, along with other folks.
700,000 Palestinians were “dis-placed” into what is now Gaza and the West Bank. And the present cycle of violence was started!
…of Parliamentary power-sharing?
Freed of his indecent exposure charge, the PNC’s whip has complained that the Sectoral Committees haven’t been meeting. Aren’t two of those Committees’ Chair rotated annually with the Opposition?
Why haven’t THEY been calling meetings??
