Coming out at what is expected to be the final conciliation meeting between the Guyana Teachers Union (GTU) and the Education Ministry regarding the salary increases being demanded for teacher’s across Guyana, Chief Labour Officer (CLO) Charles Ogle has revealed the parties are set to go to arbitration.
The meeting held with the Union head, Mark Lyte and other members and representative of MoE, Chief Education Officer, Marcel Hutson, at the Social Cohesion’s Ministry, Department of Labour on Thursday afternoon, saw yet again failed talks.
Ogle said the Ministry of Education’s team did not make a new pay offer on Thursday against the background of the fact that Government had said it could not have afforded the 40 percent demand.
The three-member arbitration panel would be required to accept evidence from government and the union. The decision by the arbitration would be binding on both sides.
The Government had asked had asked the union to accept a ball park figure of GY$700 million for 2018 and GY$200 million for adjusting some salary scales, but this was rejected by the union.
GTU General Secretary Coretta McDonald, who has been at the helm of the leadership of that union and would have sat in several negotiations with both the previous and current administrations, has said that the nation’s educators had received more under the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) Administration than what they currently get under this coalition Administration.
McDonald told scores of teachers assembled in the GTU auditorium at Woolford Avenue, Georgetown that it was under the PPP that teachers, for the first time, received additional benefits apart from a salary increase.
“If we look at what transpired under the PPP Government when they were in power and what is transpiring now…remember we didn’t want the five percent. We made noise about it. But with the five percent we got a whole lot of non-salary benefits,” she said, to loud applause from the large gathering of teachers.
She continued, “For the first time in the history of this country, our teachers were able to get clothing allowance, duty free concessions, and allowances for additional qualifications. While the PPP Government was in power — and you know I don’t want to sound political, but we have to make the comparison because of all the untruths they peddling out there…”
The GTU official went as far as to say that the current David Granger-led administration is playing with teachers’ emotions “to say to us that this thing is just three-and-something years since they in the Government. And this is the party that most of the teachers supported. So is our party. ‘Our party’ don’t work when you go in the market; ‘our party’ ain’t working when you have to pay rent; ‘our party’ don’t work when you have to face the bank to repay your mortgage; so ‘our party’ dead,” she declared.
Last week, Opposition Leader Bharrat Jagdeo looked into Government’s spending, listing several areas where it can cut back and use that money instead to pay teachers a better living wage.
Although Government and the GTU are still at loggerheads over increases for teachers, the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) General Secretary feels the matter could be resolved.
The former President said that if Government is to cut back on its wasteful spending, it would manage to cover a reasonable increase for the country’s teachers.
