Teachers must have crucial conversations, confront the brutal facts, and also keep student interests at the center of their actions

Feb 20, 2024 Letters

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Dear Editor

I have been a strong advocate for better salaries and benefits for teachersboth in Guyana and in North Carolina where the North Carolina Constitution prohibits collective bargaining and strikes for public sector workers. We do have a NC Association of Teachers but they have no bargaining rights or no rights to strike. In North Carolina, we have never gotten a 6.5% raise. It’s always nothing, a small bonus, or 1% to below 5% but mostly at the lower end. Twice in the past 30 years we had a 5% increase. In North Carolina, if teachers ever received raises of 7%, 8% and 6.5% consecutively, teachers would think they died and gone to heaven.

The strike must not cause us to say and do silly things. If it is true that the GTU President said, “You can’t build roads and teacher hungry” then that’s plain silly. (GTU President says all citizens need a decent life” (KN, Feb 17, 2024). We need both massive infrastructural development as the Government has been doing, as well as a new system of income distribution that brings benefits to the working poor. It’s not one or the other. Similarly, Governments have to think about the “whole boat” of all workers and not just one sector. “Wukking obeah” will not bring results, just hilarity. Ask the Opposition who was doing that during the five months of rigging!

The commentary by Mr. Ralph Ramkarran is quite instructive. He said, “The strike also comes at the wrong time to be successful – after the 6.5 percent pay increase was announced for public servants late last year. This amount cannot be increased for teachers without creating severe imbalances in pay in the public service. An increase for teachers must mean an increase for all other public servants which the Government will not concede. Militant action could only have had potential if it had taken place before the increases were announced by the Government. A fight to the death would not have been necessary. It would have been enough if the GTU and other unions had expressed their views in as vigorous a way as they considered necessary to get the Government’s attention” (“The Teachers’ Strike,” SN, Feb. 18, 2024).

I also liked what Mr. Clinton Conway said: “…the teachers cannot continue for much longer. It has the potential to get out of control with devastating consequences. It must be nipped in the bud. It is time for the warring parties to sit down and talk, sit down and have critical conversations, sit down and have frank and honest discussions, sit down and eyeball each other across the table in an effort to bring back normalcy to the situation.”

In his bestselling book “Good to Great,” Jim Collins uses the term “brutal facts” to describe the need for leaders to confront the realities of their organizations: “Leadership does not begin with just a vision. It begins with getting people to confront the brutal facts and act on the implications.”Yet again, you want to create a culture in the organization where people can tell you the brutal facts, which allows them to voice their opinions and feel valued within the team.Collins suggest that we engage in dialogue and debate, not coercion. He said we must build “red flag” mechanisms whereby people would not hide the burning issues but instead you want them to be able to present information to you that cannot be ignored. You want to empower then to raise issues as soon as possible, so that they can be corrected sooner rather than later.

Similarly, in “Crucial Conversations:Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High” by Patterson and others, crucial conversations are the day-to-day conversations that affect your life.

Now, what makes one of your conversations crucial when opinions vary, stakes are high, andemotions run strong.What makes each of these conversations crucial—and not simply challenging, frustrating, frightening, or annoying—is that the results could have a huge impact on the quality of your life.

Patterson et al said, “Despite the importance of crucial conversations, we often back away from them because we fear we’ll make matters worse. We’ve become masters at avoiding tough conversations. Coworkers send e-mail to each other when they should walk down the hall and talk turkey. Bosses leave voice mail in lieu of meeting with their direct reports. Family members change the subject when an issue gets too risky. We (the authors) have a friend who learned through a voice-mail message that his wife was divorcing him. We use all kinds of tactics to dodge touchy issues.”

The GTU chooses to see their glass as half-empty, while the Government and Ministry wants them to see the glass as half-full, as the Government has been willing to look at more duty-free concessions, free scholarships for teachers, house lots for teachers, and items beyond the collective bargaining agreement, etc.

As part of the brutal conversations, we must confront why 70% of teachers show up for work daily (absenteeism and tardies) and why 40% of our students are failing at NGSA and CSEC. Keep students at the center always! Keep everyone accountable!

Sincerely,
Dr. Jerry Jailall

 

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