FITUG is a social and moral repugnancy

Mar 30, 2018 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

The acronym, FITUG, means Federation of Independent Trade Unions of Guyana. If you are young at this time and do not know of FITUG’s origin, a brief note should help. FITUG was born in 1988 after a huge quarrel erupted at the TUC general congress. A number of unknown, tiny unions submitted inflated membership numbers so as to be awarded voting delegates.
These obscure unions submitted numbers that far exceeded the huge membership of unions like GAWU, NAACIE and CCCWU.
Just one example will suffice. In 1988 no one knew about a union named the Sawmill and Forestry Workers’ Union. It had no collective agreement with any employer in the forestry sector. Its statement of having 600 members was accepted. This meant it was awarded more delegates that powerful and popular unions like the UG Workers Union.
The 1988 TUC congress saw a proliferation of these non-existent unions whose delegates were used to vote in a TUC executive favourable to the Burnham Government. As a result, a number of unions walked out and formed FITUG which initially consisted of GAWU, NAACIE, UGWU, CCWU.
It was under Jagdeo presidency that state patronage was used to entice the Guyana Labour Union under the leadership of Carvil Duncan to become a government affiliated union. With GAWU being an appendage to the PPP, NAACIE headed by a government consultant, Nanda Gopaul, these unions arrogantly and illegally adopted the name FITUG with Duncan becoming its general secretary.
GAWU’s Komal Chand continued in his role as a member of the PPP’s Executive Committee and PPP Member of Parliament; Gopaul became a minister of government and Duncan became an advisor to the state apart from being on a number of boards including the GPL. At the moment, he is charged with fraud in his capacity as a GPL board member and is facing jail time.
FITUG, during the Jagdeo and Ramotar presidencies, became an auxiliary machine to the PPP and the Government of Guyana. In return, the state used patronage to keep FITUG alive. For example, when the Berbice Bridge was completed, there was no poll. The government declared that GAWU was the sole bargaining agent for bridge employees.
During the 2011 and 2015 elections, FITUG leaders were seen openly campaigning for the PPP. GAWU and NAACIE used their headquarters as campaign offices for the PPP. I saw at Helena, Mahaica, GuySuCo vehicles advertising PPP meetings in the 2015 election; GAWU officials were in the trucks. Despite the TUC’s embrace of the Burnham Government, TUC leaders were never seen campaigning for the PNC.
There was a conspiracy inside FITUG that was never made public. President Jagdeo had pressured Republic Bank to accept NAACIE as the trade union for the bank’s employees. The deal was about to be clinched but some employees informed me. I flew down to the bank to speak to the CEO and threatened him with a lawsuit if he went ahead.
I suggested a number of union leaders should address the workers then let them vote. Norris Witter of General Workers’ Union was scheduled to address the bank employees but afraid of the result of the voting, the entire affair was scuttled.
FITUG sycophantic leadership never could have envisaged that their master, the PPP could lose state power. It is Donald Ramotar, himself, who in an interview with the Stabroek News last Sunday, said, he never imagined he PPP could have lost the election. But lost it did, and now FITUG looks like a ghost parading on stage at its current triennial conference.
The faces of President of Jagdeo and Ramotar are gone; one can safely say never to return.
The numbers were substantially lower on this occasion than when FITUG was an arm of the PPP regime. The lavishness is gone no doubt due to the fact that GAWU and FITUG are haemorrhaging funds. The sugar industry has been miniaturized. GAWU and FITUG have not been receiving the millions they happily collected for the past forty years.
Unemployed sugar workers are demanding that GAWU spend on them, some of the hundreds of millions of dollars that GAWU has. In fact, GAWU’s savings is more than a billion dollars.
I will end on a note that calls for investigation by SOCU and SARA. The PPP government sold a building to GAWU next to the Court of Appeal for peanuts. This was a huge building that constituted prime real estate in a valued area of Georgetown.
If one is going to argue that Pradoville buyers were given a gift, that the state must reclaim; what about that head office of GAWU?

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