MISS Gillian Burton, the current President of the Guyana Trade Union Congress in her address to the crowd at Enmore, commemorating Enmore Martyrs made reference to the Guyana Public Service strike in 1997 when Police opened fire on public servants blocking the John Fernandes Wharf entrance. This has been a constant rehearsal of the TUC President, the TUC and the GPSU. What Gilliam Burton has been failing to tell Guyanese is what her party, the People National Congress, did to workers when it was in power 1964 to 1992. The PNC locked up bauxite workers and tear gas them while they were protesting. The PNC attacked rice farmers by let loose dogs on them. The PNC employed scabs to break sugar workers strike in 1977. Public Servants were forced to go and break strikes. Public Servants had to go to Hope Estate to do self help for hampers.

When sugar workers went on strike the PNC would use the army and the police to hunt down sugar workers representatives and jailed them. Union representatives had to hideout in cane fields.

Burnham had a new tactic to break workers strikes. Burnham sent PNC thugs and supporters to break strikes. Scabs were employed while legitimate workers were victimised, harassed and eventually dismissed. They were seen as anti-government.

The PNC in 1963 opposed the Trade Union Recognition Bill where workers could choose their unions of their choice.

The PNC had wanted to ban strikes but withdrew the bill after the TUC opposed it.

It was the PNC which took the President of the Clerical and Commercial Workers Union, Gordon Todd, into a helicopter and flew him over the sea and threatened to throw him out if he did not abandon his militancy against the government.

It was Gillian Burton’s party which refused to pay the $14 a day which it had signed with the TUC, passed legislation to freeze wages and salaries and took away collective bargaining rights from trade unions.

It will take a whole book to record what Gillian Burton’s party did to workers in Guyana during the 28 years rule. Even the TUC was controlled by the PNC and became anti-worker.