H@RD TRUTHS BY GHK LALL – Pending Teachers’ Strike 

Feb 04, 2024 Features / Columnists, The GHK Lall Column

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Kaieteur News – Teachers across Guyana are getting ready for some sort of strike action tomorrow.  What form the strike will take, and how comprehensive it will be, is an event still unfolding, and which will be visible soon enough.  Pay and working conditions are at the top of the concerns of local teachers.  At the risk of understatement, I think that a problem is brewing.  It is one that could gather some energy, perhaps lead somewhere.  Or, something fizzles out for lack of muscle and traction.  We shall see.

The PPP Government has twisted the heads of all Guyanese, so that they can see all that it has done for the teaching profession in Guyana’s public schools.  New schools.  New conditions.  New considerations.  New provisions.  And all that is new about so much more.  So, what the hell is the problem with teachers?  Specifically, what is the problem with the Guyana Teachers’ Union GTU)?  Why this drastic strike action contemplated by the GTU, especially when it could have such far-reaching impacts?  Young minds left unattended.  Adult parents left to cope with their anxieties.  Possibly schools and classrooms left abandoned and bare, a barren wilderness where there is usually the sweet hum of engaged minds going through the gears.

I think that the Government of Guyana has been everything in its power to incite a reaction of this nature.  If there has to be a showdown, then bring it on.  Better to have it now, and deal with it, than let it fester and ooze into and taint the environment, rupture the social fabric.  I am weighing the circumstances: will the teachers be in school, but operating with a delayed mindset?  In the complex, but not doing any teaching, chaperoning, or overseeing in the class.  If the attitude and intent of the GTU and their constituency are to get the maximum value out of the proposed strike action, then they have to go all the way.  To the streets, is where any strike belongs.

The teachers will have to decide how loud they will be to draw attention to their circumstances (pay and working conditions, among others).  Teachers and their representatives will have to decide how long the battle for better will be fought.  My position is that the more spirited it is, and the more enduring that the strike action, the more it could grab hold of Guyanese interest and imagination.  If teachers have made the first move to take control of their destiny, then other Guyanese could be prompted to consider their own paltry circumstances, and matters progress from a teachers protest movement to a mass movement.  There is sure to be at least one common factor linking non-teachers to teachers: it is pay.   When people are not paid properly, then they can only purchase so much that is drop-dead necessary.  The rest is a waiting game.  For pigs to develop wings, perhaps.  The rest that is missing (proper pay etc.) is what makes people reach their point of no return and say: something has to be done, something has to give.  Strike action seems to be all that is left.

In its first reaction, Minister of Labor, Mr. Joe Hamilton, said that any such action would be considered “illegal.”  I think I sense a parallel to the PNC calling this incumbent government ‘illegal’, as evidenced in the skullduggeries in the last elections.  In the government’s case, I record this point: to call workers genuinely concerned about their conditions and the welfare of their loves ones as diving into the realm of what is “illegal” is tantamount to making criminals out of law-abiding citizens.  I would contend that what this PPP Government has inflicted upon public servants and others rises to what could be deemed criminal.  The likes of Jagdeo and others may prefer to forget that Guyanese workers forced to fight for their rights were at one time in this country branded as ‘communists.’  Communists were hunted down in the United States during the ‘Red Scare’ and steel workers were savaged in the steel industry in the Pennsylvania labor wars.  I am pondering whether this is a case of history repeating itself.  The difference is that instead of the communist label, teachers and others of like mind are drafted into the ranks of criminals.

We can quibble and squabble over Collective Bargaining, unilateralism, imposition, and such, but at the end of all conversations, one red flag stands firmly planted in the ground.  It is representative of the suppression of hard-earned workers’ rights, the oppression of the working class, who seek a living wage in a land of plenty.  The PPP Government has trampled upon those who say: some more, please.  What is fair and should be.  Illegal is the first salvo, with waiting to determine what the next ones are.

Looking at the terrain, the PPP Government has everything going for it.  It has the strong arm of the law, and the strongmen within it, at its command.  There is public media already so skewed that most of it cannot straighten up.  The government has money, but not for some people.  I say think sugar, sir.  Guyanese have to decide.  A strong strike action, one that acts as a magnet for other underpaid and overwhelmed workers.  Or a nation of bystanders and docile ducks encouraging abuse, exploitation, disrespect, and pauperization.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of this newspaper and its affiliates.)

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• action, conditions, GHK Lall, H@rd Truths, teachers strike

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