Government’s intervention comes at a time when sluggishness pervades the entire global economy. What, however, is troubling is that Guyanese critics seem to have a penchant to use isolationist explanations for problems in the political economy. These critics make minimum or no attempt to anchor their explanations of some significant local economic conditions in the realm of the global economy. Specifically, the Guyana Public Service Union’s call for exorbitant wage and salary increases ignores the linkage between the local economy and global economic indicators.

A note by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) indicated that the global economy showed sluggish growth for three quarters of 2002, and if new policy stimuli are not introduced, the world economy could slide into a second recessionary dip. The recession in the U.S. was deeper than initially presented, and the inventory upturn has failed to fuel an extensive profit-led investment revitalisation. Apparently, the U.S. seems to be experiencing a W-shaped cycle. Some central bankers, at their annual meeting of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, USA, in 1998 acknowledged that the current global economic conditions are the worst they have witnessed so far. We should note, too, the economic stranglehold that the World Trade Organisation has on poor developing countries. Indeed, metaphorically speaking, when the U.S. coughs, the world contracts pneumonia.

Further HBSC Holdings estimated that global trade, after rising 12.6% in 2000, showed a small increase in 2001 and in 2002. Morgan Stanley & Co reduced the growth rate forecasts for the United States, Europe and Latin America to a small range of 0.1% through 1.5%. Latin America also is bedeviled with lingering economic woes. The entire Latin America had a total GDP of only 0.5% in 2001. The Caribbean economies also are experiencing an economic slowdown, with an estimated GDP of 0.8%. Guyana is part of this global economic framework.

This sluggish global economy, indeed, has impacted Guyana. However, critics still have not assimilated the implications of this slowdown in the world economy. Trade union leaders making irresponsible demands for wage hikes exemplify only one of many cases of non-assimilation. Recently in Singapore, with soaring economic problems manifested by possible considerable retrenchments in the financial sector and rising unemployment, the Deputy Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong called for a sustained wage restraint. The current economic scene in Guyana requires some form of wage restraint in the interest of nation building.

Amid this global sluggishness, Guyana has demonstrated a commitment to its public servants by increasing their purchasing power. For instance, minimum wage/salary increased 615% from 1992 through 2001 as follows: US$24.90 or G$3,137 (1992) to US$105.78 or G$20,045 (2001). Per capita income increased from US$231 (1991) to US$833 (1999), and Government spending in public sector employment rose from $3.2B in 1992 to $11.8B in 2000. The GPSU leadership needs to acknowledge the Government’s commitment and timely action in breaking the current impasse. This intervention will progressively enhance workers’ standard of living. Free collective bargaining has returned after its absence from 1968 through 1992. It is time for the GPSU leadership to remove itself from political wrangling and get on with the business of true trade unionism.