THE CONDITIONS ARE NOT CONDUCIVE FOR INDUSTRIAL ACTION

Dec 07, 2013 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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Unionized public servants must not allow themselves to be lured into indiscriminate acts that could rebound against them. They must carefully assess whether the conditions exist at the moment for successful industrial action.
It is hereby contended that these conditions do not exist at present. As such workers must wait and time their move. If they show their hand too early they will end up losing in the long run.
First of all they must appreciate a strike in the public service is not going to hurt the economy. It will affect citizens but the government can wait out a strike; workers cannot since they have to put bread on the table and at Christmas they need a lot of bread.
Secondly, their union is weak. The Guyana Public Service Union does not have the strength to wage any sustained or successful campaign for wage increases above what the government is offering. This union never recovered from the strike it called in 1999.  The union lost out on agency fees and became cash-strapped. It is now weak.
The Guyana Public Service Union would like to have a last hurrah over wages because it has been bypassed year after year by the government. However the union must face the reality that it cannot muster support for militant industrial action that would force the government to reconsider its decision to pay a five per cent increase this year.
No government is going to even blink when it faces a union that is demanding a 25 per cent increase much less a union that is struggling for survival. The union has, of course, to take some action. It has to squeak but it is never going to bark enough to startle anyone, not now at least.
The third factor that does not support industrial action at this time is the lack of will by workers. Guyanese public sector workers are not going to take industrial action a mere ‘weeks’ before Christmas.
Further, arguing for annual wage increases is not the right approach. Workers should not be entitled to increases averaging five per cent each year. Even in the richest economies in the world, workers do not enjoy increases of five per cent each year. If you are working for US$30,000 per year, you may get an additional one per cent every two to three years but you are never going to get any increase every year. If you want to have such increases, you have to seek a higher paying job.
The government of Guyana continues to make the mistake of paying increases averaging five per cent each year. Eventually this is going to end up bloating the wages bill to the extent that there will be significant downsizing. In fact given the fact that we are told that the Budgeted provision for revision of salaries for all workers- not just those in the public service- including provisions for hiring new workers and compensating for budgetary shortfalls in the payment of salaries amounted to some three billion dollars, Guyana may already have the reached the stage where it has an unsustainable wage bill.
The union and the workers have to therefore see the futility and dangers involved in continuing to press for annual wage increases. This trend is regressive.
The second mistake that the union has made in the past is in calling for increasing the income tax threshold as a means of increasing the disposable income of workers. This is a measure that will backfire on workers, especially poor workers because in the end the shortfall in taxes will have to be met through increased taxation and this burden inevitably falls on the shoulders of the working class.
Everyone should pay taxes. Obviously those earning more should pay more. But in the end increasing the income tax threshold simply means that private sector wages increases end up being funded by taxpayers. Everyone loses in this scenario.
What the union and the workers should be struggling for is not an annual increase but for payment of a living wage. Workers should be paid living wages so that when Christmas comes they do not have to depend on the five per cent that the government throws at them.
How can this objective be met?
SET A LIVING WAGE.
The union should establish a living wage for the various categories of workers and then urge the government to commit over a specified period to increase wages to ensure convergence with this living wage. In this way workers will not have to haggle over annual increases but will eventually enjoy a living wage.
COMPETITION FOR WAGES: Each ministry or government department should determine the skills it needs and set market rates to attract those skills.  This would see persons from one ministry applying for jobs in other high paying ministries thus avoiding the problem of workers having to wait for a promotion or an annual increase before their wages are increased.
Abolishing all the various salary bands within the public service and allowing each ministry to set its own wage rates would probably benefit nurses more than if they had to wait for overall public service wages to increase. In other words by de-linking nurses from the existing public service wage bands and allowing the place where they work to set their pay would see nurses benefiting more.
More importantly it would allow for competition for skills within the public service. This will benefit workers because they will be encouraged to sell their skills to the highest bidder without having to leave the public service.

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