UPDATE GUYANA-GTU wants a written invitation to talks

GEORGETOWN, Guyana. CMC -The Guyana Teachers Union (GTU) says it is not prepared to “accept a verbal invitation to any meeting” as it prepared to intensify its nationwide strike on Friday.

“If we write you, it is your obligation and duty to write us in return. We are not going to accept a verbal invitation to any meeting. We would like you to invite us formally to a meaningful meeting where we can agree to the terms of resumption,” GTU president, Dr. Mark Lyte, said in a Facebook broadcast ahead of plans by teachers to converge in the capital in what is expected to be their largest turnout since the industrial action began last week.

Lyte vowed that “this strike will go on as long as the government refuses to engage the union,” appealing to parents to support teachers in their quest for a living salary.

He has also called on the chairman of the Private Sector Commission (PSC), Komal Singh, to support the union’s cause, saying, “The private sector is vocal in many areas.

“It is time that the Chair of the Private Sector engage government to let good sense prevail and treat with this important matter,” Lyte said.

But in an immediate response, Singh told the online publication Demerara Waves Online News that he believes the PSC has a role in reaching out to both parties to get the children back to school.

“We are hoping right now to meet with both parties separately to understand where we are, what is happening, and how we, the private sector, can help mitigate this issue if we can at all,” the PSC Chairman said.

“We are all in for business development. We are also interested in ensuring that our children are in school because if the children are not in school, then tomorrow morning what we have: We have chaos in our society, and it affects every single one of us,” he added.

The GTU president said more than 50 percent of the teachers remained out of the classrooms, and students’ attendance rate was less than 30 percent.

He said teachers reporting for work refused to teach as “they are in solidarity with their union.”

Lyte has also warned that the union would “not tolerate that” if teachers at locations in Region One of the country were not paid their salaries unless they returned to work.

Last year, the Irfaan Ali government, which has deemed the current industrial action illegal, ignored repeated calls for collective bargaining and instead engaged a cross-section of teachers to hear their grievances and requests.

Senior Finance Minister Dr Ashni Singh, in a statement last December, announced an across-the-board salary increase of 6.5 percent that will benefit over 54,000 public servants, teachers, members of the disciplined services, and government pensioners and will place an additional GUY$7.5 billion(One Guyana dollar=US$0.004 cents) in disposable income annually in the hands of these employees.

The Guyana Teachers Union (GTU) proposes a 25 percent salary increase for 2019, 20 percent for 2019 to 2023, and an additional performance-based incentive of two percent annually.

Further, the union wants a GUY$5,000 emotional/ stress/risk allowance, a monthly Internet allowance of 10,000, a GUY$10,000 monthly allowance to teachers who use their vehicles to perform official duties, and a fixed monthly allowance of GUY$7,000 for headteachers/principals to conduct business on behalf of their institutions.

But speaking at a news conference on Thursday, Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo said if the government agreed with the GTU’s salary increases, that would mean that a graduate teacher would earn GUY$500,000 or an unqualified teacher’s salary would be about GUY$200,000.

He suggested that would create a huge disparity in salaries for teachers, police, sugar workers, and private and public sector workers who have five Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC) subjects.

“This is unreasonable. We’ve made that clear,” he said, adding that he was “not ruling out anything” regarding the possibility of government returning to the bargaining table.

“I’m just telling you what the facts are,” he said, adding that the government remained committed to addressing the teachers’ concerns, but that would depend on rectifying lousy faith.

“Until some level of credibility is re-established and we know that we’re acting only purely on concern for the teachers, it’s hard to engage,” he added.

The government has issued veiled threats about de-recognizing the GTU because it has failed to submit financial returns for decades to show how union dues were being spent.

The GTU, which has firmly rebuffed the government’s repeated claims that the strike is politically motivated by the opposition A Partnership for National Unity+Alliance For Change (APNU+AFC), said it had taken the matter to court.

In a fixed date application filed on Tuesday, Attorney General Anil Nandlall was named the respondent as the GTU seeks to quash the government’s decision to discontinue the deduction of union dues from teachers’ salaries monthly and a declaration that the strike is legal.

The GTU is also contesting, among other things, the government’s decision to deduct monies from the salaries of striking teachers for the days they were absent from the classroom.