The majority of the country’s teachers stayed home yesterday to back the Guyana Teachers Union’s (GTU) demands for increased salaries.
Children, many of who are preparing for crucial examinations were forced to stay home. Moves are underway by the Ministry of Labour to have the matter settled but a meeting yesterday failed to make headway.
The strike is expected to continue today and Wednesday and Thursday of next week. Other forms of industrial action are expected until the union’s demands are met.
According to the GTU, 80% of teachers stayed away from schools in Region Four; 60% in Region Three; 70% in Region Two; 100% in Region Ten; 60% in Region Six and 95% in Region Seven.
GTU President, Sydney Murdock deemed the activity a success “beyond the union’s expectation” and the Minister of Education, Dr Henry Jeffrey conceded that “their industrial action seems to have had some success.”
A visit to city schools yesterday showed that with the exception of many head teachers who were at their desks, most of the teachers stayed home. Only at one city school had teachers turned up as the head teacher had told them that if they were not there they would not be paid their salaries.
Teachers will not be paid for the days they were out on strike.
Visits to the schools saw a number of students hanging around in the schoolyard. At a few primary schools, some teachers worked with children preparing for the Common Entrance exam but this was the exception. Some students, preparing for Caribbean Examinations Council and General Certificate of Education examinations, told Stabroek News that they had attended schools with the hope that their teachers would have been there to assist them.
At a leading senior secondary school a number of students preparing for the Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Examinations and the GCE A’ Levels exams said they were at school because their part-time teachers were prepared to work with them as they were not unionised. Others told Stabroek News that teachers had not said they would not be at school.
Meanwhile Jeffrey said the union was being unreasonable and irresponsible and reiterated that the ministry was ready to continue discussions on all issues that related to the well-being of teachers. He called on the teachers “not to allow themselves to be misled into action that is likely to jeopardise their interests and those of their charges.”
He said that apart from the demand to go to arbitration the other reasons put forward by the union, such as increased hardlying allowances, house lots for teachers and Whitley Council leave among others, were already being addressed.
The GTU’s main objective is to increase the junior teachers’ pay packet to that of the traditional public service minimum wage and win a 15% increase for all other teachers for 2002. The government says the equalising of pay with the minimum wage is being done in a phased manner.
An attempt at resolving the impasse during the mid-afternoon at a meeting called by the Chief Labour Officer in the Ministry of Labour, Mohamed Akeel, was inconclusive as both parties stuck to their original position.
According to a Ministry of Labour source, Akeel will most likely call both parties to a meeting again today to hammer out an agreement.
The Ministry of Education stuck to its position stated at a press conference earlier in the day that it was not opposed in principle to arbitration as a last resort. But it noted that the union had failed to submit in good time a three-year proposal.
When asked about the lateness of their submissions, Murdock said that this stemmed from the fact that the negotiations began under the chairmanship of the late president, Bertram Hamilton and when he died in the middle of the year, data stored in his computer could not be found. He said that the whole process of formulating a three-year proposal had to begin all over again.
Saying no to arbitration for last year, Dr Jeffrey said that the ministry believed that if the union considered the matter of arbitration so important, how was it that they could not get their members to attend a meeting on December 18 when the previous evening he had met with them informally at a party. Their inability to meet on December 18, he said “was just a ruse. That was their strategy.”