– but wants reason from gov’t for rejection of first list

THE Guyana Teachers’ Union may be willing to put forth a new list of nominees for the arbitration panel in its dispute with the Ministry of Education, however, they will not do so unless the ministry formally offers justifiable reasons for the rejection of the initial nominees.

“We’re not putting forward any other list, GTU would want to stick to three names that we put forward unless otherwise stated that there are problems with these people. Let them bring reasons as to why they can’t accept these people,” GTU president, Mark Lyte, contended.

“GTU is willing to put forward another list if need be, but we think the candidates that we put forward are credible enough. You can’t have three senior officers of the ministry, and none of them can say on what grounds the people are rejected, is not dolly house we’re playing? They had opportunities to talk, we gave them time to speak on our list, to consult, but they still can’t say why they are rejecting. This is crazy. It shows that they came with a clear mandate to reject everything that was on offer, whether those persons were considered to be neutral or not.”

It was last Friday that the GTU and MoE met to decide upon a chairman for the arbitration panel that will be responsible for settling the ongoing pay dispute between the two. However, the meeting ended with both sides rejecting the other’s list. No new date or time has been set as yet for another meeting.

The union proposed former Home Affairs Minister Jeffrey Thomas; former Foreign Affairs Minister Rashleigh Jackson and President of a Barbados-based management consulting firm and experienced arbitrator, Dr Aubrey Armstrong.

On the flip side, the Education Ministry proposed Permanent Secretary at the Public Telecommunications Ministry, Dereck Cummings and Human Resource Manager at the Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA), Glendon Harris.

According to Lyte, the union opposed Cummings and Harris because they are both current government employees. In a subsequent statement, the MoE said the GTU’s nominees were rejected, because they are persons who, at one stage in a previous administration, had been “involved in active politics.”

However, Lyte maintains that no official reason for rejection was given to the GTU when they asked during the meeting.

“Our side brought three names and we brought their biodata, their credentials documented; and all the ministry could have told us is that Mr Harris is GRA HR and Mr Cummings is PS at Telecommunications. They had nothing else for us to see what experience it is these people have, nothing. Just name and status, that’s all they knew about their people,” Lyte remarked.

“To put it lightly, we feel as though we are dealing with a monstrous administration. A set of monsters, who have no respect and no care for the working-class people, the teachers in particular.”

According to Lyte, the GTU feels shortchanged, since the arbitration’s Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) provides that if a chairman cannot be agreed upon, the Department of Labour (DoL) would have to assume the position of chairman.

However, the GTU had already established it had no confidence in the DoL during the conciliation process, after the department’s representatives had taken part in the negotiations stage, on the side of the MoE.

“Based on what our MoU suggests, it’s that once both sides cannot agree the [Department] of Labour may have to be called in to assume the chair. We don’t have a good feeling, because if you don’t trust the [Department of Labour] for conciliation, you back at square one, with a group of people that you can’t trust,” Lyte said.

The GTU is not dismissing the option of going back to industrial action if the need arises. Teachers across the nation hard embarked on an almost two-week strike. The strike was officially called off when the MoE had agreed to conclude the conciliation process and move to arbitration.

“That remains an option, because our members, if we should call them out again, would be willing to come to the streets again, but all along we wanted this to be resolved, because our teachers love their children, we love what we do and even though we were out there, it was hard for us to see our [school] children suffer,” Lyte expressed
“But if it means that we have to come back to the streets again, we will come. Guyana would not want to see teachers out on the street again, because this time it is going to be bigger and we’re not going to be retreating again unless our demands are met.”