UG unions, administration remain at loggerheads over proposed salary increases, other issues

Nov 25, 2018 News

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Not only have they outrightly rejected the three and four percentages salary increase for academic [UA] and support [UB] staff respectively, but the University of Guyana [UG] workers’ unions have objected to staffers being eligible for an increase based on their performance.
This position was reiterated when executive members of the unions, Dr. Jewel Thomas, President of the University of Guyana Senior Staff Association [UGSSA]; Mr. Bruce Haynes, President of the University of Guyana Workers Union [UGWU] and UGWU Executive Member, Khemraj Narine, invited media representatives to a press conference in the boardroom of the Faculty of Engineering and Technology at the Turkeyen Campus.
The unions are convinced that the university’s Finance and General Purposes Committee [F&GPC] acquiesced to a last-minute request by the administration and imposed the percentages offered.

But UGSSA President, Dr. Thomas, is convinced that a favourable agreement could be reached in a short period if both parties [unions and administration] come to the table with the relevant documents to fast-track discussions.
“We can arrive at a number very quickly where everybody is happy. In terms of wages and salaries if we treat that as a discrete item and don’t get into the rest of the agenda, we believe it could be settled in one or two meetings,” said Dr. Thomas.
She disclosed that university unions have been trying to negotiate wages and salaries with the university’s administration since January. The first negotiation meeting with the administration, she recalled, was held on February 28 last, but since then, “we have been unable to agree on an agenda.”
The unions’ agenda, she shared, included salaries for 2018, travelling allowances, book allowances, medical scheme, gratuity for persons not on the pension scheme and pensions for UB staff. Dr. Thomas shared the unions’ view that the forgoing are in fact priorities for staff, adding that, “we believed that they are relatively straightforward to discuss.”
But the administration, Dr. Thomas noted, was bent on discussing other issues including: workload policy, performance management system (performance planning and review), reconfiguration of leave entitlement [vacation and annual] for UA and UB staff, annual leave entitlement for academic staff and memorandum of understanding for UGSSA and UGWU.
However, Dr. Thomas said the unions were not prepared to negotiate the first five items until the university’s personnel division had been transformed into a human resources department. The Finance and General Purposes Committee of Council, she related, had laid out a plan for this transformation since 2016 and “we had been told in early 2017 that the plan should be implemented by 2018.”
However, Dr. Thomas revealed that one of the first items that had to be implemented was the hiring of a human resources director.
“We still do not have a Human Resources Director, “she said, adding, “There were also some discussions about the persons who would comprise the administration’s small negotiating team. We objected to two persons, but when the administration insisted on their presence we were prepared to go ahead while noting our objections.”
The administration, however, was not prepared to compromise on the items on their agenda and to agree on putting the unions’ items first, Dr. Thomas noted. Moreover, she said that in August, after the unions received an email from the Vice Chancellor that spoke to this, “we decided to contact the Department of Labour to ask for their assistance in getting the process moving”. She however pointed out that the administration refused to meet with the unions, “we turned up to the meeting on October 25…they did not.”
“Their tactic, to get around negotiating with us was to rush an item onto the agenda of a scheduled F&GPC meeting under any other business and get those present to agree to this unilateral increase,” said Dr. Thomas.
Furthermore, the UGSSA President made it pellucid that, “we have said that until we have employed a human resources director, established the human resources division and conducted job evaluations of UA and UB staff, we will not be negotiating the [administration’s] first five items.”
However, the university’s administration in a statement issued hours later, refuted the claims of the unions. It pointed out that the decision of the F&GPC to approve the salary increases was unanimous.
The university made it clear too that even the UGWU President participated in that F&GPC meeting, adding, “the university’s Administration has always adopted an ‘open door’ approach in relation to the unions.”
“In that regard, the Administration and the unions commenced a process as early as February 28, 2018, to arrive at a mutually acceptable agenda for the negotiations between the parties. The unions advised on May 1, 2018 that they were desirous of having negotiations relating to salary increase and benefits for 2018, and that anything else would be discussed after agreement on those matters,” the statement added.
The Administration said that it therefore requested that the agenda for the negotiations also include the conclusion of a Collective Bargaining Agreement, since no such agreement was made since 1976. It was noted that the Administration also insisted on the inclusion of the matter of performance.
But according to the administration, “Indeed, matters other than salaries were contemplated since 2017. The Letter of Understanding signed in November 2017 with the UGSSA, which was one of two documents signed with that Union, the other being the Memorandum of Understanding, named a comprehensive job evaluation exercise and a Performance Management System as matters to be dealt with by both sides.”
It was further underscored that a significant aspect of the Administration’s pursuit of the matter of performance relates to improving the service experience of students as regards the timely submission of scripts and grades.
In the email engagement between the parties, the administration said that the Unions proposed conditionalities in respect of the composition of the Administration’s Negotiation Team, adding that “They insisted on the exclusion of both the Personnel Officer and the Chief of Staff from the Administration’s team.”
But these conditionalities were rejected by the Administration, as these officers were part of the 2017 negotiating team, over which there were no complaints. In addition, this demand represented a violation of a cardinal rule of negotiation, that each party determines the composition of its team, the statement added.
It is the administration’s view that the unions sought the intervention of the Ministry of Labour without formally informing the Administration of their intention to refer the impasse to the Ministry of Labour for conciliation.
“The Administration was invited by the Ministry of Labour to a conciliation meeting, and declined the invitation, indicating that there was no impasse, as the negotiation did not move beyond differences over the agenda,” the statement asserted. Further, the Administration noted that especially given the absence of the Collective Bargaining Agreement, which would outline matters of dispute resolution, the step of conciliation must be agreed upon by the relevant parties.
Moreover, the salary adjustment proposed by the UG Administration, and which was approved unanimously by the F&GPC, was made in the context of what is affordable, mindful of the necessity to balance the 2018 budget.
But the unions are disputing this explanation. The unions pointed out that in October, Vice Chancellor, Ivelaw Griffith, asked for the award of his second bonus of the year, since a first was awarded earlier in the year for 2016-2017.
“With the assistance of the Chancellor, he was finally given that bonus at the Annual Business Meeting of the University on Thursday 8th November 2018. He fought for his bonus while resisting an objective assessment of his performance,” the unions asserted. And they observed that “affordability was never an issue when his bonus was under consideration.”
However, the university administration noted that the bonus to the Vice-Chancellor is a contractual matter between the Council and the Vice-Chancellor, and has nothing to do with the salary negotiations or the salary increases. As such, it was explained away that the stated salary increases were made without prejudice to any subsequent negotiation, which means that they can possibly be adjusted once the negotiations get underway.
Despite the existing dispute, the administration insisted that its doors remain open for discussions with the Unions.

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