–Labour Minister emphasises; says ministry monitoring situation, guided by laws regarding labour relations

THE Ministry of Labour has maintained that the strike action orchestrated by the Guyana Teachers’ Union (GTU) on Monday, is illegal and, as such, the ministry will continue to monitor the situation.

This was according to Minister of Labour, Joseph Hamilton during a telephone interview with the Guyana Chronicle.
He said that the strike is illegal, as the proper industrial relations procedures had not been followed.
Hamilton added that this is so because the Ministry of Education and the GTU) are still engaged in discussions.

He said although they were still engaged, the union reportedly asked the Chief Labour Officer to mediate; however, there was no need for mediation as there was not a breakdown between the two negotiating parties.
Hamilton related that the ministry further wrote the union stating that the engagements were ongoing and around 60 per cent of what the discussions were about had been completed.

The Education Ministry had reported that more than half of the 41 proposals made by the GTU had been met, and there were ongoing discussions to address other outstanding proposals.

“So, we couldn’t move to mediation and conciliation when you have an engagement continuing and then the last letter they wrote, moved from that and skipped to the last procedure which is arbitration… arbitration is the fourth stage of this matter so they moved from not even number one right to four,” the Labour Minister said.

He went on to add that for arbitration to occur both parties have to agree to same and as such one party cannot impose arbitration on the other.

With this, Hamilton said he was prompted to speak on the matter through his social media platform and indicated that for teachers, if they failed to attend schools, it would mean that they are withdrawing their services and as such the employers are duty bound and are in their right to not honour the financial obligations to them for that period that they are not at work.

He said: “The employer is duty bound and is in the right not to honour the financial obligations to them for the period they are not at work because the strike is illegitimate.

So, you can’t pay people for participating in an illegality, which would set a very bad precedent. So, the teachers were alerted, they were forewarned; the information was made available to them as to engaging in the strike as to what could be the likely consequence.”

Against this backdrop, Hamilton told the Chronicle that the Labour Ministry is paying attention to the matter and added that everything that the ministry has done is guided by what the law says regarding labour relations.

“It is the Ministry of Education that will act and they are duty bound to act because their partner basically broke off negotiations and discussions by getting involved in a strike; it means that you are attempting to negotiate with me under duress,” Hamilton said.