For the third year in succession the government has imposed wage increases it thinks their employees deserve after failing to reach agreement in wage negotiations with the public sector unions. And so the country is preparing to go into the New Year bracing for yet another round of industrial disputes which in terms of the teachers could jeopardise the proper preparation of children for their SSE and CXE examinations.
It defies the imagination that for three years running the officials of a government which claims to draw its support from the working class cannot set in place arrangements that would get rid of the acrimony that surrounds every pay negotiations in recent times. It is not sufficient in December for the government to point out that it must finalise agreements within a given financial year or claim that it is making payouts in response to appeals from workers for some sort of payment to meet Christmas expenses.
The latter rationale given by the Head of the Presidential Secretariat Roger Luncheon MD, must be a slap in the face for the hardworking public servants to be told that for a few dollars more they cannot be depended on not to back their unions' demands for a living wage. These words may comeback to haunt this administration.
The government must know that workers have noticed that the national budget provided for a seven per cent pay out and that to first offer a three per cent increase was a cruel ruse. Given that from a pay increase the government can expect to recover one third back in the form of income tax, it surely could have afforded a ten per cent pay out. And surely the rhetoric of growth and denial of economic stagnation must now sound pretty hollow to workers who are now not even given a straw on which to cling in the economic maelstrom that continues to swirl around them.
The unions themselves are not without blame as they have fallen prey to the government's stratagem for the third year running without being able to come up with a viable plan to counter it. Surely, they must know that they have to do things in a timely manner, to reply promptly once they have initiated the negotiations and so rob the government of its excuse that the negotiations began late.
Union leaders have to be more vigilant in safeguarding their members' interests and if they are unable to do so must bow out gracefully or their members must remove them and replace them with leaders willing to diligently pursue their interests. It is only when they do so that their members will stand four square behind them in negotiations and be willing to make the sacrifices necessary in pursuit of their just causes.
As the New Year beckons Guyanese will no doubt feel that they are in for another round of battering and the younger ones will continue to just be physically present here while their minds continue to migrate to greener pastures. It does not bode well for the country.
Guyana is at the crossroads and unless its people can be mobilised and motivated to arrest its decline the future is bleak.
What can be done? Guyanese are resilient people and the Government has to demonstrate its willingness to take the nation in its confidence and spell out as clearly as possible what needs to be done and provide a vision for the country to which all could subscribe. It cannot command that support mainly on moral grounds. It must demonstrate its commitment to deal humanely and justly with every section of the society. Only when it does that will it have the moral authority to ask of every Guyanese and political party to support endeavours which it says are in the national interest.