The 9-day strike by the Guyana Teachers Union (GTU) — for the Government to implement the recommendation of its own task force to award a 40 percent salary increase in a multi-year agreement — has now gone to arbitration. This represents a victory for the GTU, since the PNC-led Government had insisted that its “ballpark” offer of $700 million as a one-off payout was final.
But the victory is not complete, since much depends on the specific arbitrators who would be chosen jointly by the two sides. The GTU will have to continue to insist – as it has done up to now — that only “neutral” arbitrators would be accepted. But the victory should remind other unions in Guyana that if the Government could be so obdurate against the GTU, which has members mostly favourable to it and helped vote it into office in 2015, it means President David Granger is extending the field in which he intends to consummate Burnham’s legacy — brook no challenge to the PNC’s rule by trade unions.
Unions were the incubators for the nationalist movement during the 1950s. They provided the most important institutional links to the lower classes. Unions can serve as powerful mobilisers of opposition when the interests of their members are threatened. Burnham fully appreciated their potential after being swept up by the urban-based, Creole-and-African-dominated TUC into violent opposition against the PPP Government in 1962. The racial riots in the 1960s, amounting almost to a civil war, found the trade unions as the main foot soldiers. In 1962 and 1963, the urban-based, African-dominated unions such as the GPSU, assisted Mr Burnham’s PNC’s collaboration with the CIA to oust the “communist” PPP. These unions were rewarded handsomely with Government positions; influence on policy formation; a tremendously increased membership base (with the increase in the bureaucracy); and a close working relationship with the Government — soon the dominant employer in the country.
But once safely ensconced in office, Burnham moved to curb the powers of this group, as with every other. He achieved this through several stratagems, all of which the GTU ought to be aware will be deployed against them imminently. First, there was co-opting of the leadership of key unions, such as the Guyana Bauxite Union, and rigging their elections to ensure compliant leadership. Unions became “company unions”, with Government being the “company”. New unions, such as the “Association of Masters and Mistresses,” were launched to provide competition to the GTU via its compliant, overtly pro-PNC executive.
Collective bargaining was placed in the hands of the umbrella TUC. The Government controlled this body through its control of union leadership, as above, and by the creation of “paper” unions; paying their dues and granting them voting rights far out of proportion to their membership. The fact that this administration has already raised the possibility of “collective bargaining” is a very ominous sign.
The militancy of the Linden Teachers would be very worrying indeed, and we can expect reprisals sooner rather than later. There have already been attempts to label the teachers’ strike as “political” – and the GTU leader as “PPP — and using scabs in an attempt to break the strike. If history is anything to go by, some of the more militant teachers will be dismissed through one stratagem or another.
The entire Trade Union Movement – especially its two “wings” — must be vigilant to protect the GTU in the coming months from the depredations of a Government that does not appreciate independence of thought, much less opposition.
In 1979, at the PNC’s Biennial Congress, Burnham joked about dangling Gordon Todd, head of the CCWU, after he stood up for his workers against the Government.
He told the delegates: “The trouble with us, comrades, is that we don’t know to read between the lines; we are always reading on top of the lines; we are more democratic than the people who teach us democracy.”
