Stalled public school teachers’ salary negotiation... Shortcomings in setting up arbitration panel indicative of illiteracy

Stalled public school teachers’ salary negotiation… Shortcomings in setting up arbitration panel indicative of illiteracy – GTU President

Oct 05, 2018 News

GTU President, Mark Lyte.

The word nominate can be simply defined as the action of putting forward something for consideration. Moreover, to interpret the word ‘nominate’ to mean ‘appoint’ is a flagrant disregard for the English language or simply illiteracy at its worse.
This is the conviction of President of the Guyana Teachers Union [GTU], Mr. Mark Lyte.
At a press conference on Wednesday, Lyte said that it was the act of nomination that was required of Minister within the Ministry of Social Protection, Mr. Keith Scott, after the Ministry of Education and GTU failed to agree on an individual to chair an arbitration panel to negotiate a salary increase for public school teachers.
It is clearly stated in a Memorandum of Agreement [MOA] signed by the two concerned sides [Education and GTU] on April 10, 1990 that “where there isn’t agreement between the parties on an arbitration chair, the Ministry of Labour will be asked to ‘nominate’ one”.
However, the situation that obtained was an appointment, by the Minister, in the person of Professor Leyland Lucas.
This development, the GTU President said, has indicated that the country is clearly faced with a situation that surpasses an industrial dispute.
“We seem to have a literacy problem from the top; we don’t only have a literacy problem in the classrooms but among serving ministers of government and this is a cause for concern for us as educators. We may have to start the [education] process from the top,” Lyte said.
He noted that while the Minister might have sought to appoint Professor Lucas because he is “probably an excellent person”, the union does not have the luxury of knowing of the man’s character.
Professor Lucas is said to be a remigrant who currently holds a position at the University of Guyana.
As he maintained that the Minister had no right to appoint the chairman of the arbitration panel, Lyte noted, “If you examine the document [MOA], at all times the word ‘nominate’ is used. I don’t know what other interpretation could have been garnered by the Minister?”
Should government opt to retain Professor Lucas, the union has stated its intent to initiate strike action among its near 10,000 membership.
Currently the GTU is gaining support from the Guyana Trade Union Congress and the Federation of Independent Trade Unions of Guyana to help mobilise its membership to strike. In pledging support to the union, GTUC’s General Secretary, Lincoln Lewis, said, “Industrial action has a number of measures that can bring an employer to the [negotiation] table.”
Lewis had earlier condemned the action of the Minister for moving to unilaterally appoint a chairman to head the arbitration panel to address teachers’ salary issues.
He had said that the move by the Minister, who has responsibility for Labour to independently name the arbitrator, has no basis in the Laws of Guyana.
“Unless such law – which the Minister must produce – was passed in the dead of night and assented to before the nation awakes, the trade union community knows not of its existence,” Lewis has noted.
It was pointed out that the arbitration proceedings between the GTU and the Education Ministry is “voluntary” since there exists an agreement between the two parties to move into arbitrational arrangement and where the decisions will be binding on both.
According to the GTUC Representative, what Minister Scott has done is to disregard the time-honoured good faith practice, agreed, written and signed to by the GTU and the Education Ministry on September 6, 2018.
It was stipulated in a 1990 GTU and Education Ministry’s Memorandum of Agreement that where there isn’t agreement between the parties on an arbitration chair, the Ministry of Labour will be asked to “nominate” one. But a nomination, Lewis had asserted, is not tantamount to an appointment and the difference therefore must be recognised and respected by the Minister.