The way the Government behaves, anyone would believe that Guyana had a surfeit of qualified teachers and could afford to export them to more favoured educational jurisdictions like New York. If they are indeed labouring under such an extraordinary delusion, someone needs to disabuse them of it very fast, before we all wake up one morning and find that we have no graduate or trained teachers to put in our classrooms at all. If, on the other hand, the movers and shakers of this land are not delusional, then one can only conclude that somebody, somewhere, in the corridors of power has been overcome by a fit of total irrationality.
The Government has handled the negotiations with the Guyana Teachers Union (GTU) on teachers' salaries unbelievably badly from the beginning, but the bombshell announcement late on Thursday evening that the Ministry of Education was unilaterally withdrawing from arbitration to which it had previously committed itself, has implications well beyond the education sector. One wonders if the President of Guyana who has gone galloping off on another of his peregrinations gave his imprimatur to this particular piece of lunacy.
It will be recalled that the Government last year had imposed a salary increase on the GTU of 5 per cent, in which the latter had not concurred; it subsequently announced that negotiations on 2002 salaries were closed, but it would be open to negotiating 2003 salaries. The GTU refused to accept that the matter of 2002 wages was non-negotiable, but the Ministry of Education remained adamant, thereby triggering the almost inevitable teachers' strike earlier this year. The classroom disruption was settled only after lengthy wrangling, partly on the basis of concluding an agreement on salaries for the period 2002-2004.
The talks duly opened, but after delays, misunderstandings and a lack of momentum towards a solution, Minister of Labour, Dr Dale Bisnauth, told this newspaper on October 6, that Minister of Education, Dr Henry Jeffrey, was prepared to go to arbitration. The GTU, he said, would soon be invited to a meeting by the Ministry of Labour to work out the terms of reference for the arbitration proceedings, and to decide on the composition of the adjudicating panel.
Anyone well acquainted with the politics of this country but unacquainted with the teachers' issue, would still know from experience what happened then. The Ministry chose its representative - Mr Winston Jordan - and the GTU chose its representative - Professor Harold Lutchman - following which the two sides deadlocked over who should be the chairman. Names were floated by both sides, and were rejected out of hand by one or the other. It might be thought that there was no humour to be wrung from such a situation, but that was not so. The final nominees put up by the union and turned down by the Ministry of Education were two Central Committee members of the PPP/C, namely, Messrs Moses Nagamootoo and Khemraj Ramjattan. Citizens permitted themselves a wry smile.
On November 29, we reported that an officially declared impasse meant that the Ministry of Labour could now select a candidate for the chairmanship without the approval of the GTU or the Ministry of Education. The failure was duly announced, and the union was predictably incensed. "The ministry never intended to agree on any of the names submitted [for chairman]," it said in a release; "[it] was waiting instead for a deadlock to be declared so the Ministry of Labour [could] name the individual."
With the benefit of hindsight it now seems that the GTU was being unduly generous to the Ministry of Education, because the Government of which it is a part apparently didn't intend to go to arbitration at all. The straw in the wind came on Friday, November 28, when the two sides turned up at the Ministry of Labour boardroom at least one of which - the GTU - was prepared to sign the terms of reference for the arbitration. As it transpired, no signing was done. According to the union, Chief Labour Officer Mohamed Akeel prevaricated, saying he thought it prudent to find out first if the Ministry of Education nominee would be available to sit on the arbitration panel. Considering that the latter ministry had submitted the name more than four weeks ago, and according to the GTU, Mr Akeel did not appear to deem it necessary to put the same question to the union's representative, either this is a case of rank dissembling, or it is an instance of utter bureaucratic incompetence.
Of course Thursday's news of the Ministry of Education's withdrawal from arbitration came coated in an announcement of a 5 per cent teachers' pay hike for 2003. If the Government thinks, however, that a unilaterally imposed pay award will distract any self-respecting teacher from noticing the Ministry's breach of faith, they are surely mistaken.
It might be noted that the by-passing of the collective bargaining process for two years running in the case of the teachers, no less than in the case of the Guyana Public Service Union, will have consequences for labour relations generally, and will affect the administration's image with the international labour organizations. But even that is not the main concern here. The central issue is that the Ministry of Education agreed to go to arbitration, and having set the whole process in motion, it then arbitrarily withdrew. If that is not an example of shabby behaviour, then what is?
It does not help the Government's case that Mr Akeel's lame excuse for the volte face was that the administration had already budgeted for the fiscal year, which was almost at an end. After negotiations have been dragging on for so long - since October last year in the case of the 2002 salaries - they have no leg to stand on. Furthermore, all they had to do in this instance was announce the 5 per cent increase as an interim payment, but still proceed with arbitration.
A Government whose word is not its bond will not just be mistrusted by teachers, it will be mistrusted by everyone, both here and abroad, even on those occasions when it is acting with the best of motives. Reversing the damage it has done to its reputation will require sustained work and a great deal more honesty of purpose than it appears to have been inclined to display in more recent times.
Exactly how the administration arrived at the strange conclusion that caprice was a substitute for solid negotiations will perhaps forever remain a mystery, but where the teachers are concerned, it had better cast around for some way to climb down with a minimum of loss of face, so that the arbitration goes ahead after all.
For the whole of this year it has been conveying the impression - erroneously, no doubt - that it is unconcerned about whether every teacher with a piece of paper leaves, or whether the entire education system closes down. Let it not mention another word about how many new schools it has built, or how many rickety structures it has rehabilitated. While important, in and of themselves these things cannot lift the standard of education in this country. To do that you need qualified teachers. In order to get those, you have to find a way to pay them better.
And we certainly aren't going to make any headway on that front unless we have a Government which first recognizes that that is what is required, is prepared to cast around for solutions to the problem, and finally, and most important, is committed to negotiating with the teachers' union in good faith.