Home Letters GTU’s illegal strike, and purported corporate support for teachers at picket line
Dear Editor,
“The rising tide lifts all boats” is a truism that holds, and so it is as Guyana’s economy grows; but some want their boats lifted as a priority, they also think their boats are more important and deserve to be higher.
Fuelled by wild assertions about the amount of ‘oil money’ being earned, there is a scramble for a ‘fair share’, with no thought for others, for sustainability, for infrastructure, for investment in youth through education and job creation. Public servants want more; teachers want more; nurses, Police, soldiers, everybody wants more! More! More!
The teachers are presently on strike for more, despite the lowest paid teacher earning $205,000 per month. The Police must be watching this with some amazement, as a Constable makes the same as a trainee teacher, and a corporal makes $134,000 per month although being saddled with many more responsibilities than an untrained graduate teacher.
I would think the Police need attention before teachers.
And then there are the nurses, who certainly deserve more. The point is: we (Guyanese) are all in the same boat, and it would take time for the improvements to come to our sector. The ‘oil money’ is funding less than 20 per cent of the 2024 budget; it cannot cover the present public sector salaries, much less fund selective increases.
The teachers have benefitted from full pay during the pandemic without a requirement to be at work, unlike the Police and nurses, who were deemed ‘essential’, and had to turn up or be fired. Full advantage was taken of the pandemic, and in many cases, teachers were paid up to two years without being ‘on the job’. On a regular day, there is 30 per cent absenteeism of teachers in schools. In any other service, heads would roll.
On Monday, February 5, Coretta McDonald announced that the GTU has acquired a corporate sponsor who would cover any strike relief payments as needed. In 2018, the GTU was audited by the Auditor General after a complaint was made that the union was unable to meet strike relief payments if necessary. This corporate sponsor has not been named, nor has the support been quantified, so this appears to be a blank cheque or private arrangement between McDonald and the sponsor. I look forward to learning more about the sponsor in the coming weeks.
The ‘corporate sponsor’ statement was preceded by an assertion by McDonald that “many, many of our teachers are Afro-Guyanese, and this Government is anti-working (class); more than that, they look to punish a certain set of people, and because of that, our teachers fall into line.” This is thinly veiled race-baiting, and is reminiscent of the PNC’s Volda Lawrence promising to give jobs to “people who look like me”, at a meeting at Congress Place in 2018. The charge by the Government: that the GTU strike is politically motivated, is supported by the presence of many non-teacher PNC activists in the picket lines.
Teachers have decided that ‘The squeaky wheel gets the grease’, and it is better to follow the noisemaker than wait for the tide. To facilitate them at the expense of other public sector workers would be a folly, and would inevitably lead to ever-widening circles of labour disputes and unrest. A stern warning should be issued, and then firm action taken to rein in those who have this sense of entitlement at the expense of the rest of us. The strike numbers are not public, but I believe there were more than 70 per cent of the teachers in school today, which is higher than average; an irony that does not escape notice.
Sincerely,
Robin Singh