The PPP Govt. battling labour, weakening workers

May 01, 2024 Editorial

Kaieteur News – Guyanese must be fighting for Guyanese, first, foremost, and with every spark of energy present. On this Labour Day, not one Guyanese worker should be existing with the grimness of coping with an unlivable wage. Not in the country that boasts the brightest prospects, the best statistics. No Guyanese family should be anxious about how it will get to the next meal, what it will be made of, from where the means will come. Not in one of the richest countries anywhere, not when its citizens are among the most envied in the world. Need and hunger should not be the reality of any Guyanese worker and his or her family on this Labour Day, or any other day.

The fulsome speeches and sweet messages from political leaders and groups will flow on this Labour Day. We point them to the inconvenient reality of the teachers of Guyana being fought every step of the way by their own government. Their struggle is for a fair wage. The fight of these workers of Guyana, and educators of the children of Guyana, are for the standards and provisions of their collective bargaining agreement to be honoured in letter and spirit. Neither has happened with any element of honesty, not even allowed to gain some semblance of a foundation. The PPP/C Government has battled teachers in boardrooms and courtrooms in efforts to intimidate them, diminish them, and deny them what is their just due. Tens of thousands of public servants have been subjected to the same contemptuous, damaging treatment. But the government says that it respects labour, and that it is fair to the workers of Guyana.

The total pay and allowance packets of many ministers in the PPP/C Government are 15 to 20 times that of a line level teacher. But that is declared to be fairness, the nature of leaders in a government that cares because there is respect for the rights of workers. The economy is powered by some numbers that are out of this world, what cannot be matched by any other quarter, yet teachers and public servants have been insulted with percentages and raises that mock being a worker in Guyana. The government insists that it is fair. The private sector has lamented the shortage of skilled workers, and the government has agreed. The wages of workers in that sector will have to match their expectations of what they are worth, what such amounts must be. The government is pleased with itself to broadcast that it is laying the groundwork for a modern and vibrant future in its top-heavy emphasis on infrastructure projects. Hundreds of billions have been identified in the national budgets of the last few years to build up and broaden the infrastructure base, and with all the familiar corruptions that are now part and parcel of public projects, public programmes. The unspoken aspect of that overemphasis is that the cost of labour has been minimised and pulverized, which leads to what rankles. When labour is hungry and angry, then that is much energy that is not employed in the best manner, and the nation is the loser for it.

It is unnerving and disagreeable that workers in the Guyana of today are compelled to scrape and scratch for a living. The compensation of teachers and public servants (among many other categories of workers) condemns them to a state of near beggary. There is a clear case that can be made for a huge fraction of the labour force in Guyana living on or close to the poverty line. Yet the PPP/C Government that has control of the purse strings has dedicated itself to fight against the just calls and causes of Guyana’s workers (teachers and others) tooth and nail. With the arrival of the enormous national patrimony and this country’s tiny population, Guyanese workers and their families should be celebrating on all the Labour Days since. It has been the other way around, when government policies founded on unilateral impositions, have taken root and sprouted. How can this ever be acceptable in the presence of collective bargaining? Guyanese are the toast of the world, but poor Guyanese are traumatised by their own richly settled government.

Editorial, energy, inconvenient, Labour Day, workers

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The PPP Govt. battling labour, weakening workers

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