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Labour must not be reduced to silent servitude
Peeping Tom…
Kaieteur News- In a nation where the sun rises reliably each morning and sets with unshakable certainty each evening, it is odd that the opening and closing of our businesses should be governed by whim. The clock, once revered as a civilizing device, now ticks in vain for the workers of Guyana. Their labor stretches across seven days and unholy hours, unmoored from statute or sanity. There was once a time when the day had a rhythm, a beginning and an end. Today, it is a blur.
The country’s laws, as they exist, do make provision for fixed hours of work and for the compensation of overtime. Yet they sit in statute books like unused China—nice to look at but never brought out for actual use.
The law is clear: after forty hours, overtime should commence. But this is implemented selectively, and in the same breath, quietly undermined even by the government itself. There are reports that some government drivers, for example, receive a fixed overtime allowance regardless of the extra hours worked. If true, this practice is not merely questionable—it borders on the unlawful.
But it is in the private sector where the problem grows most rank. The convenience of unregulated business hours may benefit the consumer and even pad the pockets of owners, but it comes at a steep human cost. The workers, many of them young salespeople in stores and supermarkets, are often made to toil for weeks on end without a proper day off. The conditions under which they labor are indifferent to the notion of rest.
To make matters more curious, the ten-day part-time work program introduced by the government has strained the labor supply. Some businesses now find themselves struggling to recruit and retain staff, especially at the lower rungs. Sales girls and boys are demanding as much as $35,000 per week—a figure well above the minimum wage, and one that, while seemingly generous, speaks more to market scarcity than labor progress.
But money is not the only issue. The deeper problem is one of dignity, and the gradual erosion of the idea that work should be bounded by rules, by limits, by a recognition of the human need for rest and renewal. We cannot speak of progress while the foundations of labor crumble beneath us. It is not enough to demand punctuality and obedience from workers while offering them neither protection nor predictability.
The solution is not revolutionary. It is, in fact, old-fashioned. We must return to fixed and statutory-set working hours. Let businesses open at 8:00 or 9:00 in the morning and close no later than 5:00 in the evening. Let Saturdays be a half-day, and Sundays a day of rest— with work reserved for restaurants, shopping malls, and the occasional errand, but not for the round-the-clock grind that now characterizes our commercial culture.
The order that fixed and statutory-set working hours will bring is necessary. A society that cannot grant its workers the comfort of predictability and the assurance of lawful treatment is one that treats its people as expendable. The economy must not be a ravenous creature, feeding endlessly on human time. It must be a compact—an agreement that those who give their labor will be treated with fairness.
To those who argue that fixed hours are bad for business, I offer this: what is bad for the soul is eventually bad for commerce. Tired, overworked employees do not make for good service. Exploitation does not build loyalty. And chaos in working hours, while profitable in the short term, sows discontent and fatigue that spreads across families, communities, and eventually, into the heart of the nation.
We need the return of the bell—literal or figurative—that signals when it is time to begin and when it is time to go home. The church once rang its bells. The school had its chimes. The factory had its whistle. These were not merely sounds; they were rituals that gave life its shape.
Guyana has much to be proud of, much to look forward to. But in the rush toward economic transformation, we must not lose sight of the human scale. We must not become a place where only the bottom line matters, where labor is reduced to silent servitude.
Let us reimagine a Guyana where the law is not just written but lived. Where businesses open and close as they are meant to, and where every worker, from the cashier to the driver, knows that their time is valued. That, in the end, is how a nation respects itself. Let the clock strike five, and let the doors close. The work will be there tomorrow. The worker may not.
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