…as Govt refuses to budge over arbitration Chair
The Guyana Teachers’ Union (GTU) on Wednesday called on its members to be on standby as it gears for another round of strike action; this time on a larger scale, if the imposed chairman for the arbitra-tion panel – for the wages dispute between Government and the Union – is not withdrawn. The Chairman of the arbitration panel is Dr Leyland Lucas of the University of Guyana. He was named arbi-trator last week and according to the GTU, they did not agree to the nomination but rather Lucas was imposed on them by the Labour Department.
According to the Union, it is also prepared to take the Education Ministry, and more so, the Govern-ment to court, if any action is taken against teachers who will be going on strike.
This was related by the President of the Union, Mark Lyte. He told media operatives that he believes the ministers – both Education and Labour – have literacy issues, since at all times, in the Memoran-dum of Understanding (MoU) the Education Ministry has made reference to, the word “nominate”.
Additionally, Lyte also said the Union has not taken lightly the threat by the Education Ministry to pe-nalise teachers, who are prepared to strike.
He was at the time making reference to the threat issued by the Ministry, after the Union announced its plans to head to industrial action for a second time.
The Ministry pointed to the section of that agreement which stated, “during the consideration of the matter in dispute under the grievance procedure, there shall be no strike, stoppage of work whether of a partial or general nature, go slow, boycott, picketing, retardation of production or any other inter-ference with the Ministry’s operations by the Union, nor shall there be any lock out or any other form of interference by the Ministry. Both parties shall endeavour to maintain a state of normal industrial relations”. This agreement was signed back in July 1983.
No breach
However, Lyte on Wednesday explained, “we do not see any breach as being committed if we call our members out because as far as we’re concerned, the arbitration panel and the Terms of Reference are the first two steps to setting arbitration… but arbitration, in our view, hasn’t started as yet so if that is to happen, the GTU would have no other course but to walk the steps of the court with them (Edu-cation Ministry) because we are prepared to ensure that our members do not suffer in any way, so we will be prepared to go to court as well”.
The Union on Wednesday gave the Ministry seven days to withdraw Lucas as the Chairman of the arbi-tration panel.
Lyte also noted that he believes Government has no intentions to address the issue at hand. It is be-cause of this, he promised that this round of strike action would be much “bigger”, due to the support of its sister Unions, who sat beside them in Wednesday’s meeting.
The Union’s head said it believes Government has sinister plans, as it remains reluctant to appoint a neutral Chairman to head the arbitration panel.
“I am of the view that there is some sinister plan afoot to thwart the process and not to allow fairness and equity to prevail… we take note of the fact that strike action is always a last resort and we thought having given the Ad-ministration an ultimatum of seven days that we would have had a favourable response instead the Minister with responsibility for Labour would have issued appointment letters to the nominee from the Ministry of Education and the Chairperson in the form of Dr Leyland Lucas,” Lyte said.
‘Imposed’ Chairman
Last Tuesday, Labour Minister Keith Scott, who is still currently acting in the capacity of a conciliator, took it upon himself to introduce the Chairman for the arbitration panel to address the ongoing teach-ers’ salary impasse.
The move was highly condemned by the Union as they did not get a chance to introduce their nomi-nee for a Chairman to the panel.
