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‘We trust our union’- teachers on GTU decision to alter period for negotiation of salaries
Teachers had taken to the streets during the strike calling for better pay
Kaieteur News – A number of teachers across the scope of Guyana have voiced their surprise at the outcome of the conciliation process with the Ministry of Education and the Guyana Teachers Union (GTU) but have stated that they trust the Union in whatever action it decides to take.
On Friday the Education Ministry announced the conciliation talks have come to an end and they had conceded to an agreement between the ministry and the GTU that the multi-year agreement will go from 2024 onwards instead of the most recent GTU proposal of 2019-2023. The decision came after some 70 days of strike led by the GTU CA. As a result, this publication reached out to a few teachers to have their view on the situation.
Abiva Cort, at teacher at Presidents College said that, “My professional view is that most of the membership would have been on different zoom calls and it was settled that the agreement will go ahead and we have to accept the fact that we cannot strike indefinitely.”
The teacher however said that he feels that, “If government is put in our position they cannot live on what we are struggling to live on.”
Miss Chantelle [only name given] agreed with the GTU saying that, “If they are trying to come to an agreement, I don’t see why we cannot return to our post, however I do not think that teachers should return back to work, if the GTU and the ministry cannot come to a common ground, by the end of the week.”
She stressed that there was no point in having teachers prepare a classroom if they would not be in use of it, as the government seems to be pushing for E-learning to be introduced as soon as possible.
The teacher lamented, “Additionally there is no point in preparing a classroom you are not going to use and the government is blatantly saying they do not care about teachers since they are introducing E-schooling they can easily use the few teachers who are willing to sit back and accept.”
Randy Mingo who has been vocal from day one of the strike explained that he spoke with the [union rep] when they signed to call off the strike.
Mingo noted “They were saying that even if the government foregoes the previous years they were looking at, the proposal that they are putting into the 2024-2026 proposal is going to be somewhat huge enough to compensate for those years…That’s my understanding what I gathered from them.”
“At this moment I am just waiting to see where we go from here with this. They are saying that the negotiation is going to start immediately, at this moment I don’t know what to think,” He stated.
Martin Samaroo, another vocal teacher from Essequibo told this publication that to his “understanding this is a negotiation process, so I trust the union 100% because they have a track record of doing things the right way.”
Samaroo “ In addition to that we should remember that since the process is going to begin, official negotiations on the next 2024-2026 the proposal that GTU is going to submit to them for the benefit and discussion of benefits for teachers.”
He is of the view that the new proposal is “going to include a lot of the demands that would not have been met in the 2019-2023 agreement but it is going to be in the 2024 agreement. The reason, why I can say that is because if the process fails at that time we can go to another step, and if it reaches to arbitration you might find teachers’ salaries even doubled with a fair understanding of how the arbitration process goes.”
Hence, the educator said he has no qualms whatsoever with the GTU agreeing to have them done afresh and to include some of the demands that they would have been making from 2019-2023.
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