GTU, teachers should sue the PPP Administration for back wages based on last year’s significant adjustments

Jun 05, 2024 Letters

Dear Editor,

Kaieteur News – The Government of Guyana has over the years dating back to 2000 or 2001, the last year of the multi-year award by the 1999 Arbitration panel, has failed, and been willfully negligent in its constitutional duties of meeting with the bargaining agent for teachers, the Guyana Teachers’ Union, to arrive at salary adjustments commensurate with Guyana’s economic realities. Its treatment of this matter has been one utter disregard for submissions of the GTU, and it has instead sought to unilaterally impose punitive adjustments of 5 percent until recently.

These unilateral impositions have not allowed the salaries of teachers to be adjusted over the years by guidance from knowledgeable persons on appropriate adjustments necessary to meet the demands placed on teachers’ households that resulted from the drastic structural adjustment policies of the late eighties and early nineties in the first place, which destroyed the purchasing power of Guyana’s workers, teachers included, or meet rising cost of living since 2001.

Very probably as a consequence of the threat of being sued as recommended by a number of commentators in the public domain, the Government of Guyana in November 2023 announced an extraordinary adjustment in salaries for teachers, inclusive of allowances which varied with the level of University education achieved ($10,000 for Degrees, $20,000 for Masters, $30,000 for Doctorates).

This allowed my gross salary as an untrained graduate teacher for example to increase by 23.6 percent or $42,967, inclusive of the $10,000 allowance for my university qualification, and the 6.5 per cent or $11,826 increase, which had been paid retroactive to January 2023. In spite of my request for the administration to pay balance of $31,141 of the increase retroactively to January 2023 also, this was not done, the administration obviously intent on denying or robbing outright teachers their due wages as has been the norm decades past.

It is my suggestion that the GTU, its lawyers, teachers, inclusive of those retired, consider suing the government and request the Court to find:

That Government of Guyana has been negligent in its constitutionally prescribed duty as employer over the last two decades in meeting with the Guyana Teachers Union to negotiate salary adjustments for teachers.
The negligence did in effect not allow for any disputes to be moved towards the process of arbitration as prescribed in such situations.
Consequent to there being no resolution on salaries over the years, with no properly advised salary adjustments, Government of Guyana has been underpaying teachers over the years, and in fact, owes them for all the back years over which the GoG failed to meet the GTU to arrive at salary adjustments for these years.
That the 2023 salary increases be treated as an interim amount by which Government has been underpaying teachers over the years. Consequently, the Court should award teachers the 2023 salary adjustments as a correction to teachers’ salaries for all the years over which the Government of Guyana failed to honor its constitutional duty as employer.

A successful award by the court would realize an amount in excess of $4.4 million for the twelve years I worked, much less that of others who are on much higher scales with longer terms of employment. It would also be a great incentive to other teachers generally.

Yours Faithfully,

Craig Sylvester

Craig Sylvester, GTU, Letters, teachers

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GTU, teachers should sue the PPP Administration for back wages based on last year’s significant adjustments

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