ALTHOUGH the Guyana Teachers’ Union (GTU) and the Ministry of Education (MoE) agreed on salary increases last Friday,they are still in discussion to work out the non-salary benefits, which are expected to be decided upon by Wednesday, when the agreement is expected to be signed.

GTU General Secretary Coretta McDonald on Sunday confirmed that the union and the government have not yet completely finalised the plan for other non-salary benefits. According to McDonald, she expects that these issues will be clarified by Wednesday and does not see it affecting the moving forward of the agreement.

Following the resumption of negotiations between the GTU and the MoE last week, with the involvement of President David Granger, the GTU was offered a retroactive salary increase of 10 per cent for 2016 and eight per cent respectively for 2017 and 2018. The GTU rejected that offer and was subsequently offered an increased 12 per cent for 2016, with which it agreed. There is also an offer of $350M towards debunching
“Some tough decisions had to be made to ensure that every member of the teaching fraternity benefits. We could not have accepted a deal that would see over 8000 teachers receiving nothing for 2016 and 2017. This new deal will allow for the least of the scale, which is a teacher aid receiving approximately 100,000 retroactively, with the exception of the debunching,” the GTU said in a correspondence to its members.

Aside from calling for salary increases over the past few years, the union has been campaigning for a number of non-salary benefits to be addressed, including clothing allowances, duty-free concessions, Whitley Council and risk allowance monies, performance incentives, improved qualification allowances, and hardline station allowances, among others. According to McDonald, these have not been completely decided upon as yet.
The state of the non-salary benefits has been of concern for several teachers who took to social media to voice their concerns.

When the negotiations between the two parties began last August, the union had some 27 issues that they were looking for the ministry to address. As the negotiations continued, a few of the non-salary benefits were eventually agreed upon in August, even as the salary increases offered at that time were rejected.

The union had immediately rejected an original offer of a one-time payout of $700M for salary increases and $200M towards debunching. This saw the teachers going on a two-week strike, which came to an end when the ministry agreed to let the dispute move to voluntary arbitration.

The GTU was calling for an increase of 40 per cent for 2016 and respective incremental increases of five per cent for 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020.

This proposal was not accepted by the government and the union had announced last week that it was preparing to once again embark on a nationwide strike.

Notwithstanding the acceptance, McDonald said she was “disappointed” with the offer.

“By now you would’ve already gotten the report of what the offer is and what was accepted, I’m quite disappointed, but like everything else, it is what it is,” McDonald is recorded as saying in a circulated voice note.