THE Guyana Local Government Officers Union (GLGOU) has issued a 48-hour ultimatum to the Georgetown Mayor and City Council (M&CC) over its failure to approve wages and salary increases for Local Government officers for 2013. 

In a statement seen by this publication, the GLGOU informed City Mayor Hamilton Green that the action will be taken subject to his previous indication that he will “revisit the issue and have the matter of approval for wages and salaries for members of GLGO.”
GLGOU’s President Dale Beresford is concerned that the Mayor & Councillors have the union “at ransom”, since, according to him, the Mayor has placed a conditionality on the approval of wages and salaries for local government officers. And the conditionality is that similar increases will be given to City Councillors.
“While we empathise with the Councillors, as they should and ought to have an increase, these are separate matters which a Collective Labour Agreement exist between the councillors and the Guyana local government officers union and there is no such agreement that we are aware of with the councillors,” Beresford said after a press briefing at the Mayor’s Office yesterday.
Beresford informed reporters that the increase of advances, allowances and increases for councillors are subject to approval by the Local Government Minister, according to provisions in the Municipal and District Councils Act, Cap 28:01.
“I want to make it very clear, this 48-hours ultimatum commences today and we will take appropriate industrial action should our demands not be met,” the GLGOU President further said.

TARGETS FOR SHUTDOWN
The union represents some 250 local government officers, Beresford said as he cautioned that if those demands are not met, it will trigger industrial action to shut down the Office of the Mayor & Councillors as well as the Abattoir, Municipal Clinics, Municipal Day Care Centres and Markets.
The increases which the GLGOU has proposed are some 5% for those 250 or so workers. Beresford said the Council in committee meetings had approved the monies to cater for the increases but that decision was to be further taken to the full Council at their biweekly Statutory Meeting.
The demands of the GLGOU come at a time when conflicts at City Hall have heightened since a Motion was passed and approved by the Council on Monday to stay any other business of the Council until the restoration of the salary for City Hall’s Public Relations Officer Royston King.
At the last statutory meeting, the agenda of the Council was tossed aside to consider what the Mayor called the arbitrary cutting of salary for the PRO. Outraged by that decision, the Mayor & Councillors approved a motion for the reinstating of King’s salary with a conditionality that no other business of the Council is to be considered until that motion is acted on.