…GTU asks for time to study candidate

THE Ministry of Social Protection has appointed University of Guyana (UG) Professor Dr. Leyland Lucas as the Chairman of the arbitration panel, to decide on salary increases for teachers which could not have been solved during negotiations between the Education Ministry and the Guyana Teachers’ Union (GTU).

However, on Tuesday during a meeting between the two sides, the GTU President Mark Lyte and General Secretary Coretta McDonald stated that their union needs to carefully assess the qualifications of Lucas before they are willing to move forward.

Stepping out of the meeting room at the Department of Labour yesterday, Lyte indicated to the media that another meeting will be held at 13:00hrs today to facilitate the process. “We’ll be meeting again tomorrow to finalise the process. There is a proposed person as Professor Lucas and we need to do some background check on that,” he commented to the media.

Meanwhile, McDonald is of the opinion that the Ministry’s Department of Labour through Minister Keith Scott, is seeking to manipulate the GTU into making a decision.“What we recognise is that the minister with responsibility for labour, he is trying to bully this process into saying to the GTU ‘this is our prerogative to appoint and we have done so, and this is your chairperson’,” she said, adding: “All the GTU is saying to the minister [is that] we need some time to look at Professor Lucas to see what he’s bringing to the table, before the GTU can agree on who will be our chairperson, but the Department of Labour is bent on attempting to bully the GTU and we will not take that.”

Minister Scott, however, defended the department’s position on appointing a chairman to lead the arbitration panel. “The law allows us to appoint the chairman because…when they had the discussion between the Ministry of Education and the teachers’ union they could not agree on a chairman, so the law says that the chairman must come from the Ministry of Social Protection and we have done so as is required by the law. Out of that we will be able to choose somebody we know and feel is acceptable, not only to the two bodies but also to all Guyana,” Scott responded.

At the same time, he vouched for the competence of Lucas stating: “He’s highly qualified. He has experience in the field of industrial relations. [He is] an academic of the highest regard, he works overseas in the US, and he’s here on sabbatical to offer his assistance and his help to the people of Guyana and to the University of Guyana. He is also known for being objective and fair.”

Lucas is also the university’s current Dean of the School of Entrepreneurship and Business Innovation (SEBI) and was present at the meeting for familiarisation purposes.
Speaking to the stance of the GTU to make its own assessment of the Professor, Scott said that while the ministry brings no objection to this, the GTU’s review will not change the outcome of the process.

“I said to the union [we need to] bring this process to an end…they asked for the CV of the gentleman. It’s okay if you want the CV, you might want to know who you’re dealing with, and we presented the CV of the chairman to them. So now they have the CV, but let us bear in mind that while they have the CV they can now have confidence in the academic and the intellectual ability of the chairman that has been selected, but they do not have the process legally to say ‘we reject the chairman’ because this is strictly in the province on the Ministry of Social Protection,” he stated.

When questioned further on the claims made by the union regarding “bullying” the minister responded: “In engagements you will always find people who can use words that make them feel comfortable…if they want to interpret our obeying the law as bullying, how can I tell them how they must react? So, it’s not for me to comment on the reaction of the union, it’s for me to ensure that we can present something that…you the people of Guyana will feel comfortable with that we are doing the right thing,” Scott said, also adding: “We are going to have that process to come to an end because at the end of the day we need not to have any industrial unrest in Guyana, but to have children given the best that they can get.”

Today, both parties are expected to meet to finalise and sign the Terms of Reference (ToR) for arbitration.