THE TRADE UNION MOVEMENT IS ON THE DECLINE

May 03, 2013 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

The PPP did not return May Day to the workers. May Day had long been severed from the workers and placed in the hands of the politicians and their lackeys within the trade union movement.
Just after the PPP took office, it announced that it was returning May Day to the workers. It would no longer have the President address May Day rallies, the main one of which was held by the Trades Union Congress (TUC) in the National Park.
The PPP administration in restoring May Day to the workers was merely saving face, because PPP leaders had historically faced ridicule at the central May Day Rally.
Even in the hard guava season when workers faced the humiliation of going to work hungry, when teachers were forced to sell sugar cakes and sweets in school just to supplement their income, when cassava pone became a dominant part of the Guyanese diet because of the restrictions on the importation of flour, even when faced with such deprivations, many workers still taunted, booed and hissed Cheddi Jagan and other leaders of the PPP when they addressed the main May Day Rally organized by the Trades Union Congress.
Despite restoring May Day to the workers, the government nevertheless still continues to have its top officials attend rallies held by trade union associations such as the Federation of Independent Trade Unions of Guyana (FITUG) and the Guyana Trades Union Congress.
At one rally a few years ago, the Prime Minister of Guyana was treated in a most disrespectful manner and was forced to leave. On another occasion, the Minister of Labour was forced to walk out because of comments from the podium and from those nearby.
No self-respecting government should ever have any of its officials return to a rally in which there is the likelihood of being ridiculed and abused. It is precisely because of the reception government leaders used to receive at TUC rallies that I feel the government took a decision not to have its officials make a formal address to those rallies. This snubbing of the government is unbecoming of workers and it is a disgrace that it was allowed to happen.
The TUC has failed in its long history to unite the trade union movement. It cannot do so. Those who continue to hold on to the illusion that unity of the trade union movement can be achieved under the umbrella of the TUC are wasting their time. Unity cannot be achieved under that body. How can trade union unity be achieved under an organization with such a checkered history?
The TUC in the sixties was a tool of political subversion and in the seventies and eighties became manipulated by the ruling politicians to the extent that it lost all credibility and achieved very little for workers.
Those who feel there is still hope for the TUC should question what that body has achieved in its long history and more importantly, what it is likely to achieve now that we are in an era where the might of unions is on the decline.
For years there has been little progress in uniting FITUG and the TUC. And this is never going to happen unless there is a democratization of the trade union movement.
It is inconceivable that throughout its history the largest union in Guyana has never had the opportunity to hold the Presidency of the Trades Union Congress, and this is a tragic and shameful situation.
Workers should equally not be too enamored by FITUG. This is no longer the union that it was in 1989, but it does have greater credibility than its counterpart the TUC.
A great deal of government officials are likely to be at the rallies organized by FITUG, and this in itself is not good, because it will only deepen the divisions by cultivating the impression that the government is more comfortable with one association, rather than with the TUC.
The trade union movement is on its deathbed because of its own internal divisions and because of the global decline in the usefulness of unions.
The golden era of workers, when glory and gains were won, is over. Those who long for a return to that age are living in the past. Trade unions will never again command the sort of respect or influence that they once had, not anywhere in the world, and definitely not in Guyana.

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