Not even the heavy downpour or the government’s attempt to restrict the right to free movement and peaceful assembly could deter the determined. On May Day, amid grey skies and soaked streets, workers marched with conviction—commemorating the day that honours their labour, their struggle, and their unyielding spirit.
Unions affiliated with the Guyana Trades Union Congress (GTUC) took to the streets of Georgetown, standing firm in their commitment to justice and workers’ rights. Absent from this year’s march, however, were unions aligned with the Federation of Independent Trades Union of Guyana (FITUG) and the Guyana Public Service Union (GPSU). They cited concerns over unrest triggered by national protests surrounding the suspicious death of 11-year-old Adrianna Young. In their view, the possibility of exploitation of this tragedy for political disruption was reason enough to abstain.
Ahead of the May Day events, the Ministry of Home Affairs issued a sweeping Public Safety Order on April 29, restricting public movement in response to sporadic incidents of social unrest. Critics saw this not as a move to protect citizens, but as an attempt to stifle public expression. The order was lifted only at the close of May 1—too late for many to fully exercise their right to protest.
Yet still they came—hundreds of workers, marching from Parade Ground, a site stained with the blood of enslaved Africans executed in 1823, to Critchlow Labour College, named for Hubert Nathaniel Critchlow, the Father of Trade Unionism in Guyana and the wider British Empire. Despite the fire that gutted the college just weeks prior, the grounds hosted this year’s rally—a symbol of both destruction and resilience.
This year’s theme—“We need a change where the State respects workers’ rights”—resonated deeply. GTUC General Secretary Lincoln Lewis took the podium with thunder in his voice and urgency in his message.
“The time for change is not coming. The time is here. The time is now!” he declared.
He painted a vision of a society where nurses, teachers, miners, and sugar workers are no longer treated as invisible or disposable. A society where collective bargaining is not a symbolic gesture but a legal obligation. A society where workers’ rights are not optional—but fundamental.
“Too often,” he said, “workers have carried this nation on their backs only to be left behind. This must end—for a nation cannot rise if its workers are kept on their knees.”
Lewis issued a powerful reminder to the government: workers are not beggars—they are citizens. Not dependents, but the very financiers of the state. Their labor fuels the economy. Their taxes fund the nation.
“This country is ours,” he thundered. “It’s governance must reflect the voices, needs, and dreams of all its people—not just the privileged few. That is not a favour. It is a right.”
He warned that a government unchecked by accountability becomes a stage for corruption and impunity. A democracy cannot thrive if power is hoarded, if dissent is stifled, or if the law becomes selective.
“In a just society, the law is sacred—not strategic,” Lewis stated. “Guyana belongs to no party, no dynasty, no clique. It belongs to the people.”
He challenged workers to demand more than slogans and statistics. He pointed to the government’s pride in Guyana being the world’s fastest-growing economy and asked:
“But what does that mean to the single mother in Berbice? To the jobless graduate in Linden? To the sugar worker in West Demerara? The pensioner who counts coins at the market? The teacher who moonlights to survive?”
“Where is their share of the wealth? Where is their justice?”
Lewis urged workers to hold fast to the Constitution, reminding them that Article 13 enshrines equity, inclusion, and participation—not as suggestions, but as supreme law.
He called on fellow trade unionists to speak truth to power, to defend every citizen—regardless of race, region, or political affiliation—and to reject division, which he said “fractures the nation, breeds resentment, and sows the seeds of collapse.”
Closing with a call to conscience, Lewis insisted:
“Guyana is not short on resources. It is short on will—the will to do what is right. We must commit to justice not as a slogan, but as a national creed.”
And through the mud and the rain, the voices of workers rose—not with despair, but with determination. As The Internationale rang out through the crowd, its old refrain found new life:
“So comrades, come rally, and the last fight let us face.”
And so they did.
