New GGMC Board…Workers clash with new Ministry over ejection of union rep

Feb 26, 2012 News

The Guyana Public Service Union (GPSU) and workers of the Guyana Geology and Mines

GPSU’s President, Patrick Yarde

Commission (GGMC) are heading for a showdown with the recently established Ministry over the ejection of a Workers’ Representative from the inaugural meeting of a newly “constituted” Board of Directors.
The matter has even been raised with President Donald Ramotar.
According to GPSU’s President Patrick Yarde, 148 workers of GGMC who are members of the GPSU, have since written Minister of Natural Resources and the Environment, Robert Persaud, demanding that the union representative, Gordon Nestor, be reinstated on the GGMC’s Board of Directors. The Ministry is a new one established to oversee forestry, mining, oil and gas and the environment.
According to a letter dated February 17, written to Minister Persaud and copied to GGMC’s Chairman, Major General (Rtd) Joe Singh and the union’s President, Patrick Yarde, the workers are insisting that Nestor was obstructed from being seated during that inaugural Board meeting is “irregular”.
The workers also said that that inaugural Board meeting, held at the Ministry’s headquarters, in the compound of the Office of the President, on February 9, may have been “improperly” constituted”.
“We, the workers of the Guyana Geology and Mines Commission (GGMC), are very peeved, offended and embarrassed over the crass and humiliating manner in which Mr. Gordon Nestor, Workers’ Representative, was treated…”
The letter said that Nestor was attending based on a response to a notification and an invitation from the Chairman.
“Mr. Nestor was advised to leave the meeting on the ground that his term of service on the Board as workers’ representative had expired, despite the fact that he is, currently, the legitimate Workers’ Representative on GGMC, having been elected on March 25th, 2011 for the period of no less than one year.”
According to Yarde, GPSU had meet with Minister Persaud on January 14, over the controversial restructuring of GGMC where it was agreed that the Collective Labour Agreement between the union and the GGMC would have been signed shortly.
The union leader said that on February 10, he learnt from the Minister that the GGMC Board was “reconstituted” and that Nestor was no longer recognized as the Workers’ Representative.
“This declaration is unilateral, because the democratic process was not appropriately invoked to give authenticity to such a conclusion. In the circumstances, the union wishes to clarify that Mr. Nestor’s membership on the Board bears no relationship to its reconstitution,” Yarde wrote in a letter of protest to Minister Persaud.
Rather, Yarde insisted, Nestor was duly elected as the authorized Workers’ Representative of GGMC on March 25, 2011, for a term of one year which ends on April 24..
The union leader warned the Minister that until the expiration of the term, Nestor must be recognized and acknowledged as the representative on the Board.
“The union would like to advise that Mr. Nestor’s removal from the meeting of the Board was therefore highly irregular and ill-advised. This, accordingly, was also contrary to the spirit of cooperation with the union, which you enunciated and embraced during discussions after acceding to office as Minister of Natural Resources and the Environment.”