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Trade Union Movement in solidarity with GB&GWU’s struggle for Human Rights
DEAR EDITOR,
I feel obliged to extend a word of thanks to Mr. Lincoln Lewis. I have always regarded him as one of the more courageous and principled trade unionists in Guyana. Because, as I am aware, Mr. Lewis and others have stood up, for or against, what they and many others – including those who lack the courage to make their views known – consider to be right or wrong, as the case may be.
I for one, have no doubt that when this period of Guyana’s history is written, in say fifty years from now, Mr. Lewis would be among those who would emerge with considerable credit. This apart, I firmly believe that there is an important connection between the two concepts.
Trade unions are not only crucial for the protection and promotion of the interest of Workers, in particular, and of the population in general, but they are capable of serving as vital instruments in safeguarding those rights which are universally proclaimed as fundamental, if not sacred. Even the most cursory knowledge of Guyanese history reveals that time and again the Trade Union Movement has been at the fore of the battle for these rights, which were by no means easily won.
It is unlikely that there could be any more important issue confronting the Trade Union Movement in its of safeguarding the rights of the individual than that pertaining to the right to work and some of its related consequences.
I had on another occasion reverted to what I consider to be some of the important questions which need to be raised, and answered by those who wield power in the name of the people. The movement must of necessity be concerned where workers – as in the case of the 61 former employees of RUSAL and Russian Management of the Bauxite Company of Guyana Incorporated (BCGI), who are members of the Guyana Bauxite and General Workers Union (GB&GWU) – could be dismissed because they responded to a strike called by their union. What in my view, is important in regard to this matter is not so much the number of persons who were dismissed, as the fact that in such circumstances the services of workers could be dispensed without much formality and without much regard for the results of such dismissal.
The major problem is not so much to understand the basis of the exercise of the power of dismissal, as to reconcile it with the so-called right to work which is mentioned in the Constitution, and the freedom to hold political views guaranteed in the Constitution and to be perpetuated in the Constitution. Whether or not there is at the present time a right to work and its scope, is a matter of some dispute.
This matter is, to some, dealt with under the Constitution. Article. 22(I) of the latter is to the following effect:
“Every citizen has the right to be rewarded according to the nature, quality and quantity of his or her work, to equal pay for equal work or work of equal value and to just conditions of work “.
This article then goes on to say how this right is to be guaranteed which, it should be noted, is not by or enforcement provisions provided for in connection with civil and political rights.
The issue which has been exercising my mind is whether the existence of this article would mean a change in the power of dismissal, which RUSAL has so far claimed and asserted in regard to its employees, and which power is colonial or feudal in origin, or, at any rate, was in existence and utilised by our colonial capitalist employers to good effect.
Yours faithfully,
Sherwood Clarke
General President
Clerical and Commercial Workers Union
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