Has… solidarity returned?

As we careen towards our tryst with (workers’) destiny on May 1 which has been declared “Labour Day” – and for most citizens a public HOLIDAY!! – your Eyewitness notes that the rituals to honour Critchlow have begun!! Now your Eyewitness grew up in the house of a card-carrying trade union member who was around when workers were shot and killed at Leonora and Enmore for standing up for their rights!! He still clenches his fist as he remembers the trade union battle song – “Solidarity forever, (x3)/ For the union makes us strong”!!
Now he knows there’s always gonna be competition between unions as they fight for turf and suchlike, but hey!! when it comes to extracting more goodies for their members don’t they acctraept that solidarity will make them stronger? But like with everything else in our dear Mudland, politics is what crept into our dear Garden of Trade Unionism!! Ironically, the trade unions came before politics – and in fact the former gave birth to the latter!! Clearly, however, you can take politics out of the trade unions but you can’t take trade unions out of politics!!
And there you have it folks. Everything was hunky dory back in the day after old Critchlow founded the BGLU back in 1919 – just four years after “Solidarity Forever” was composed. It organized the dockworkers and other African urban workers, but in 1924 Critchlow’s BGLU called a strike in GT – and sugar workers on the East Bank were mobilized to march in solidarity towards “town”!! Cops at Ruimveldt headed then off at the bridge there and fourteen of them were killed and dozens wounded!! That only Indians were killed made some think the solidarity wasn’t all that deep!! When Ayube Edun founded the MPCA for sugar workers in 1937 – they all quickly joined up!!
When Jagan returned from America, he joined the MPCA – and when Burnham returned from England, he joined Critchlow’s BGLU. Universal suffrage hadn’t arrived yet – and it was the unions that mobilized the masses!!! But you see the schism that’s still dominating our politics was already there: the MPCA organized the mostly Indian sugar workers and the BGLU African urbal workers!!
Well, the two leaders formed their explicitly political organizations but they kept their hands inside the affairs of their stepping stones. The entry of the CIA in its mission to remove the PPP from office in the 1960s was the critical factor in the unions becoming openly politicised. They formed the initial phalanx that precipitated the Black Friday riots that was the PPPs death knell – and split the trade union movement!!!
But with the PPP unfurling their One Guyana program that includes one and all in the developmental thrust, maybe “solidarity” is returning?

…trade unionism died??
When Reagan in the US and Thatcher in the UK led the 1980s neo-liberal revolution that miniaturized the role of the state – allowing private enterprise and “the market” to “do wha’ de want wid we” – one of their first targets trade unions!! The former broke the traffic controller’s strike while the latter did a number on railway and coal workers!! By the turn of the new century – and millennium – trade unionism was on the run up north – and inevitably Guyanese unions followed suit!!
Your Eyewitness ain’t gonna get into the whys and whyfores about this trend – save to point out that one consequence has been the unbelievable wealth gap up north between the top 1% and the rest!! Our question gotta be whether we want to replicate that here – in our “fastest growing economy in the world”!!
Your Eyewitness believes there’s a need for workers interests to be represented in businesses. Maybe the German model where they have seats on corporate boards can be adopted?

…Delcy been encouraged??
Venezuela’s Pres Delcy Rodriguez continues her diplomatic wooing of Caricom – in the run up to the ICJ’s hearings on their Border Controversy with us. She’s presently in Barbados meeting PM Mia Mottley – a critic of US’ Venezuelan action!!