‘Pay workers decent wages and gratuity will not look like gold mines’

Mar 28, 2022 News

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– Witter tells labour minister

Kaieteur News – President of the General Workers Union (GWU), Norris Witter is adamant that the government must pay citizens decent wages rather than enticing them with the idea of contractual work and gratuity.
Witter was responding to a recent interview on Globespan 24×7 with Labour Minister, Joseph Hamilton when he suggested that unions in Guyana have outlived their usefulness, and that more workers wanted to move over to contractual employment where they earn biannual gratuity benefits and have space to engage in other ventures.
Minister Hamilton had explained that times have changed and people, especially young people, have a different attitude towards working than earlier generations. He said that people want money now to repair their homes, purchase vehicles and address other immediate matters. He pointed out that people are no longer interested in being employed at one job for long periods. That especially young people, who are multi-talented and skilled, want to try various fields of work and that they want to travel and experience different trades, and contractual work allows them this space.
He also said that many unions were not performing their duties properly as they were more concerned about union dues and pay for workers. He insisted little interest has been shown in training of workers, safety and other such activities. The GWU president believes however, that before any push is made to popularize contract work, fixed workers must earn a decent salary. “The reality of the matter is that because those workers are so poorly paid their gratuity in their eyes is like a gold mine.” He said, “What they (government) should do is to ensure that they pay those workers decently. Incorporate that same gratuity into their current salaries and then migrate them into permanent employees.”
Witter explained that it makes no sense having a job for a fixed period, a year or two with no guarantee that at the end of the contractual period the contract will be renewed. “There is no security. And as these people’s contracts draw close it creates anxiety and uncertainty among them.”
The other point, Witter stated, is understanding that the fixed term contracts are tools used by politicians to infiltrate and access information from the workforce. “One must seek to understand the whole idea behind fixed term contracts. The fixed term contract was intended to patronise certain loyalists within parties and put them in strategic positions to sequester information.”
He said what is common is that these contract employees are placed in positions and are paid three and four times more than permanent staff. Contract workers are also afraid to join unions because they know that their contracts are for short periods. They believe that if they join unions, they would be vicitmised and their contracts not renewed, Witter explained.
He said that the idea of fixed contracts is basically a political expedient, an innovative one that is not intended to derive economic or human development. The Auditor General’s report found that the David Granger-led government had employed a total of 471 contract workers for 2019 with their payments accounting for 75 percent of employment cost for that year alone. The 471 employees on contract represented approximately 51 percent of the 924 employees as of December 2019.
Witter and members of the GWU were at the time protesting in front of Parliament Building. They demanded the immediate signing of the tripartite agreement to raise the minimum wage from $44,200 to $60,000. They said that the high cost of living is enough for the government to expeditiously honour the agreement which Minister Hamilton had signed on government’s behalf since 2019.
GWU called for the removal of income tax, claiming that if multibillion dollar companies like ExxonMobil and high judiciary officials like the Chief Justice and Chancellor of the judiciary are exempt from paying the tax when they clearly have the means, then ordinary citizens should not have to face that cost either. GWU called for the reinstatement of the collective bargaining agreement mechanism which gives unions a platform to bargain for workers’ benefits. Witter said the previous People’s Progressive Party government had put a stop to the talks. While the A Partnership for National Unity/ Alliance for Change (APNU+AFC) government had campaigned on it, they too had not restored collective bargaining. A renegotiation of the ExxonMobil contract was also called for as the union said Guyana must get a better deal from its patrimony. They said that with a better deal from oil revenue, the government could increase workers’ salary and in turn, improve the local labour environment.

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