The Guyana Teach­ers Union (GTU) has for­mal­ly asked the Min­istry of Labour to help break the dead­lock in ne­go­ti­a­tions for a 20 per cent in­crease in salaries for teach­ers.

GTU Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary, Coret­ta Mc Don­ald, has writ­ten to the Chief Labour Of­fi­cer, Dhanesh­war De­onar­ine in­di­cat­ing that the union wants to ac­ti­vate stage three – the con­cil­i­a­tion process – “based on un­sat­is­fac­to­ry set­tle­ment at the lev­el of the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion”.

The Sep­tem­ber 21st let­ter was al­so copied to sev­er­al per­sons in­clud­ing Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion Priya Man­ickc­hand, Labour Min­is­ter Joseph Hamil­ton and Chief Ed­u­ca­tion Of­fi­cer Sad­dam Hus­sain and Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary of the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion Shanielle E, Hoo­sein-Out­ar.

The gen­er­al sec­re­tary said that the union sub­mit­ted its mul­ti-year pro­pos­al to the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion in Au­gust 2020 but so far there has been no counter-pro­pos­al by the end of Sep­tem­ber 2020 even af­ter the gov­ern­ment changed.

“Con­se­quent­ly, to date we are still await­ing that counter-pro­pos­al,” she said.

GTU Pres­i­dent Mark Lyte said the union wants the Chief Labour Of­fi­cer to “in­ter­vene to find a com­mon ground” be­tween the work­ers’ rep­re­sen­ta­tive and the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry “so that our salary mat­ter can be re­solved.”

He said if Chief labour Of­fi­cer is un­able to bring the two sides back to the bar­gain­ing ta­ble, the GTU would move to ar­bi­tra­tion.

“If with­in 14 days he is un­able to do that, then we will write ask­ing for an ar­bi­tra­tor to be as­signed to the mat­ter- some­one who we con­sid­er neu­tral, agreed on by both sides to ar­bi­trate on the salary in­crease for teach­ers,” he said.

The GTU said that while it does not ex­pect the gov­ern­ment to agree to its de­mand for a 20 per cent hike, “we are not go­ing to set­tle on a sin­gle dig­it” for the pe­ri­od 2019 to 2023.

“Our fear is that we’re go­ing to end up with an­oth­er year of an im­po­si­tion of a salary in­crease,” the GTU gen­er­al sec­re­tary said.

Teach­ers have re­ceived uni­form al­loances of GUY$8,000 (One Guyana dol­lar=US$0.004 cents) since 2015 and the union has al­so in­di­cat­ed that teach­ers are owed “hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars” in out­stand­ing dif­fer­ences in salaries be­tween ex­pe­ri­enced and long-serv­ing teach­ers and new, ju­nior teach­ers.

She said the union is ex­plor­ing a num­ber of op­tions, in­clud­ing le­gal ac­tion, to force gov­ern­ment to pay the monies.

The Guyana Trades Union Con­gress and all its af­fil­i­ates, Caribbean Union of Teach­ers, Ed­u­ca­tion In­ter­na­tion­al and the Cana­di­an Teach­ers’ Fed­er­a­tion have al­so been alert­ed about the lat­est de­vel­op­ments in the pay dis­pute.

GEORGE­TOWN, Guyana, Sept 26, CMC

CMC/gt/ir/2023