Despite protests earlier in the week by laid-off casual postal apprentices and concerns voiced by the Guyana Postal and Telecommunications Workers Union (GPTWU), Chairman of the Board of the Georgetown Post Office Corporation, Bishop Juan Edghill, is standing firm there is no dispute between the two parties.

GPTWU continues to express concern at the arbitrary dismissal of 149 casual postal apprentices by the GPOC. However, when contacted and asked about the GPOC’s opinion on the dispute last Thursday, Edghill stated that there was “no dispute”.

In a recent release, the union stated that the dismissal of the workers is in violation of the time-honoured principles laid out in the Memorandum of Agreement between the two organisations and the Termination of Employment and Severance Pay Act (Act No. 19 of 1997) Part 3 Section 7 (a) (b) and (c) singularly or collectively.

The union said that the category of employees was continuously employed with the GPOC for 225 working days or one year. According to the GPTWU, the issue of the workers being appointed was addressed at the bilateral level between themselves and GPOC’s management with a time line given by the latter for the completion of the appointments on January 1, 2010.

The union stated that the GPOC explanation for the firing of the apprentices was because its budgetary allocation exceeded some $10M is “unfounded, absurd and meaningless”.

The GPTWU argued that the GPOC is a service oriented organisation and to ensure timely and proper services are provided, budgetary allocations will be exceeded.

The workers representative body stressed that it is its intention to amicably settle issues that arise with the GPOC management but its efforts are being thwarted by the Chairman’s interference.

This, it said, has resulted in the creation of “mayhem and undue hardship” for the workers.

Edghill earlier had responded to protests by laid-off casual employees at a press briefing on Monday stating that the GPOC cannot continue to carry the excess burden of unregularised employment.

Figures as of December 29, 2009, have shown that the wage bill of the GPOC was in excess of $10M above the $25M allocated for casual workers last year.

He said that after a statuary meeting the previous Wednesday, a general consensus was reached that the services of all casual employees employed by the Corporation should be terminated by December 31, 2009.

He pointed out that casuals had been given this information at an earlier date by the organisation.

Edghill also denied all knowledge of pending protests actions, stating, “We had no notice and we didn’t know there was a dispute”.

As defined at the meeting, an is an employee who is employed for a period of up to 28 days in the place of an employee who has gone on leave or some other circumstance.

But Edghill said a situation arose when an employee would return to work and the apprentice still remain on the job. He said that the casuals were all laid off due to the fact that the organisation did not wish to appear prejudiced by handpicking workers, stressing that the intent of the actions taken was not to displace anyone but to regularise the system.

It was noted that a casual worker does not have to be a very qualified person because of the short-term nature of the job, but due to them staying on the job, a situation arose where there was long term employment of some poorly qualified persons.

Reiterating that the GPOC cannot continue to carry “excess burden”, Edghill said that the organisation is not a “charity”, but a business, and is expected to deliver.

He said if the organisation cannot produce, it will be unable to pay workers and the current situation has turned into one of “sympathy”.

And the excuse often used is that the organisation does not want to take bread out of people’s mouths but that bread is being taken out of the regular employees’ mouths since they were not paid their six per cent increase as other government employees, the Chairman noted.

Relating to an earlier issue of 21 GPOC workers who were entangled in allegations of fraud to the tune of some $1M, Edghill said that all parties involved will have to pay back the full sum.

The lost sums will be retrieved through systems where the employees will not be receiving their leave passages. They are also to be “red circled” and will not be eligible for any promotions for a year.

However, Edghill was quick to point out that the vast majority of the employees involved were being disciplined for negligence and not for dishonesty as the money would not have been lost if they had been following standard procedure.

Edghill said too that all casual workers are eligible to reapply for jobs in the organisation and promised that all postal services will remain unhindered by the situation