It has been more than 14 days since our hard-working and dedicated teachers have rightfully and boldly taken strike action against the government for decent salaries. In Guyana, more than 85% of our qualified teachers in classrooms make an infinitesimal salary of just about USD600 per month, in very harsh work conditions. However, the Ali -led government remains incredibly contemptuous and callous against these professionals, who, sometimes, at great personal sacrifice, serve the nation’s children. The action of the incumbent must be continuously and consistently confronted with flint -like determination and sheer will not only by our teachers but also parents, guardians and all those, who believe in fairness and justice. There is no other way to getting the government to understand that teachers and their families are hurting and needs a fairer deal from the state.
This government, that likes to boast about being working class, was elected, by the people, to serve all the people. Its service must be governed and guided by the constitution, laws, rules, regulations, policies, protocols, fairness and justice. The government must practice good governance and adequately provide for the felt needs of the people.
Unfortunately, the PPP/C has been managing or mismanaging this nation based on its skewed collective view about certain sections of and groups in our society. As a result, it has been demonstrating discrimination, political control and domination. This has been heightening tensions and fatiguing citizens, who only desire is to be able to provide for their families and live in peace. Like the rest of public servants, our teachers have not been able to provide for their basic needs.
They have been patient and long suffering. For years, they, through their representatives, the Guyana Teachers Union, GTU, have been pleading with government to sit at the table and talk about decent salaries. But their pleas have fallen on deaf. Meanwhile, cost of living has skyrocketed beyond affordability.
Many teachers cannot provide three nutritious meals a day for their children, many are single parents, living in rented apartments. They are on a long rough road to poverty and starvation. The sad thing about it is that if they fail to do something about it now then their children and grand- children will have to trod this very road to poverty and starvation. This is why their collective industrial action is necessary and timely. They must not turn back until there is progress on this front.
Naturally, this authoritarian regime has deemed their collective action illegal; its realpolitik. But this very government has broken the law when it failed to engage the union in collective bargaining. It completely ignores its own wrong doing but point fingers at the teachers. Was it Jesus who said: “You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye”.
The government is breaking the law with impunity and getting away with it. This is doing extreme violence to our constitution, to industrial relations, to the morale of our teachers, and the quality of education delivered to our children. It is undermining the significance and role of important institutions such as trade unions, in this country and facilitating an unpardonable recklessness and insensitivity in government. Maybe, that the whole intention of the incumbent; to undermine the foundation and authority of institutions that have been established to protect the weak and vulnerable in our society and to hold the government accountable for its actions.
Government has taken a deliberate decision to shun collective bargaining and embrace impositions. It has been imposing pitiful and miserably low percentages increases in the salaries of teachers. This is not only wrong but violates the scared rights of workers. No government has the legal authority to unilaterally determine, decide and impose wages and salaries for public servants. The government’s stance on this matter has leaves teachers at a permanent and substantial disadvantage.
This is why the answer that the Vice President, Bharrat Jagdeo gave to a question by a reporter, at one of his vacuous press conferences, a few weeks ago, missed the point in play. The reporter asked the vice president about his ability to live on $85,000.00 per month without a family and his view that teachers are treated fair by his government. The vice president reverted with an answer to the effect that: the government should give everyone $500,000.00 per month. It was an amazingly infantile answer. No one is asking the government to give $500,000.00 or even $300,000.00; teachers are asking the government to sit and talk with them to use the process and system of collective bargaining and to treat them with fairness and respect. That’s all. Exactly, like it does when the sugar workers go on strike or take other industrial actions. Clearly, the government continues to discriminate against our teachers but rush to sit with GAWU, and pay out money to that category of workers. The various and diverse roles of workers are all equally important to the growth and development of our society.
The right to collective bargaining is enshrined in our constitution, which this government swore to uphold, and defend but has shamelessly breached at every opportunity. However, it is rather shocking even scandalous that the “guardians of democracy” and certain members of the Private Sector, who are usually very vocal on all matters and issues in this country, are suspiciously silent on this particular issue. This is a clear demonstration that they are only concerned about their personal and private interests; not the welfare of citizens or the development of this country. One might argue, successfully, that their blind loyalty to the incumbent, and their acquisition of more toys has caused them to suffer from paralysis; they are unable to even condemn the illegal posture of the government, let alone to take action against it.
One can also successfully argue that had the Ministers of Education, and Local Government and Regional Development acted with similar alacrity, on a report by UNICEF, on the condition of the dormitory School at Madhia, as they did to vengefully stop the Check Off for the union, and to deduct monies from the small salaries of those teachers, who are exercising their right to withhold their labour power, then we probably would not have had the tragedy at Madhia, in which twenty precious souls, under the care of this government, perish in a massive inferno; a sad event that was avoidable but for the carelessness of those, who were entrusted with the lives of those children. But, the government’s move to deduct monies from teachers is a political ploy to silence teachers, who work together to shape their profession, and to strip them of their voices in the workplace. Further, this demonstrates why organised representation is crucial to the struggle of workers for a fair share of the national pie.
The demand by teachers for collective bargaining is not unreasonable, in fact, it is sensible, particularly in circumstances where there is evidence to show that Guyana is the fastest growing economy in this part of the world. Yet, when you compare the salaries of our teachers with those in other Caribbean countries, Guyanese teachers are paid the lowest. In Trinidad and Tobago, teachers get an average of USD 1,500, St. Vincent teachers are paid about USD 810, Grenada teachers receive an average salary of USD 1, 890 per month. Guyana, the nation with massive oil and gas reservoirs that rival the ones in Venezuela, and the nation that presented the largest budget ever in its history of over 1 trillion dollars, pays its teachers an average of USD 600 per month.
I close with a few words from the song Survival (1979)- Bob Marley and the Wailers: “How can you be sitting there tell me that you care. When every time I look around the people suffer in the suffering in every way, in everywhere. Some people got everything, Some people got nothing, Some people got hopes and dreams, Some people got ways and means. We’re the survivors, yes, the black survivors.”
