Guyana's pay award: agony and conflict
Rickey Singh
THE majority decision of a divided Arbitration Tribunal has made public service workers in Guyana happy but shocked a government that has, nevertheless, reaffirmed its commitment to honour the pay hike award, while warning of "very serious social and economic consequences for the nation". The decision has also resulted in a probe by the country's Chief Labour Officer of possible violations of conduct in procedures and also "disregard" for sections of the tribunal's terms of reference as claimed in a Minority Report from the government's nominee on the three-member body. Urgent clarifications are being sought by the Chief Labour Officer from the chairman of the tribunal, Dr. Aubrey Armstrong, a Guyanese Management Consultant. The two other members of the tribunal were the Guyanese economist and leading member of the Working People's Alliance, Dr. Clive Thomas, nominee of the Guyana Public Service Union and the Federated Union of Government Employees, and Dr. Gobind Ganga, Guyanese economist and Director of Research of the Guyana Central Bank, the government's nominee. The implications of the tribunal's majority award and the nature of the two reports - majority and minority - submitted to Labour Minister Dr. Henry Jeffrey, seem serious enough for the future socio-economic development of Guyana, as well as for any future tribunal, to warrant careful consideration by, for instance, the Caribbean Community's Ministers of Labour, the regional office of the International Labour Organisation (ILO), and possibly an independent review by a sitting or retired judge. Armstrong, who has been very much in the news, even before the official submission of the two-member majority report, said to me in response to questions on charges by Ganga, that he rejected claims of political bias and disregard of professional procedures in the conduct of the tribunal's business. "We have a document", he said, "that can stand scrutiny". He also scoffed at allegations of a "political hatchet job against the government", and insisted that "we did our very best". He also said he would prefer not to "go down the road of calling names" in reference to a claim he had earlier made about "pressures" from officialdom. Labour Minister Jeffrey, who has himself rejected the "pressures" claim by Armstrong, said in my conversation with him, that while the government recognises the need to pay the workers, it also recognises that it has an obligation to the nation to "expose the two reports to rigorous review by whatever mechanisms, including judicial, that may be necessary and appropriate". Jeffrey, conscious of the political and racial divisions afflicting the nation, also made the significant observation that "it is a pity that we do not have a consensus (from the tribunal), for a consensus in our context is as important as the award itself..." A former Principal of the Co-operative College, Jeffrey spoke ahead of a press briefing by President Bharrat Jagdeo. The new President, who still holds the portfolio as Minister of Finance, has announced the government's decision to honour the pay award while considering how to respond to the strictures of the international financial institutions while pursuing alternatives, including "inevitable serious budgetary adjustments". The government nominee on the tribunal, who like Armstrong, has also been very much in the news, has himself been urging an independent review of the work of the tribunal. In contrast to the 31.6 per cent and 27.67 per cent pay hike for 1999 and 2000, respectively, recommended by Armstrong and Thomas, Ganga had proposed 17 to 25 per cent, depending on the varying categories of workers. He has claimed that specific provisions of the tribunal were ignored, that there was failure of professional neutrality and that the tribunal was "held to ransom by totally extraneous, immaterial and irrelevant considerations in making a super increase in wages and salaries..." He further charged "exclusion" from the final process, lack of impartiality on the part of Chairman Armstrong and declared that "the tribunal was a two-member show" that "disregarded" the terms of reference and terms of resumption of work. He cited varying examples, including the statement in section 6.1.1 which states that there was "the need to make a credible award which does not itself become the source of further contention between the employer and employees leading to more industrial unrest and strikes in year 2000 - a year in which national elections will be to the forefront". For the government's nominee, this was simply exceeding the tribunal's terms of reference and "negated the very raison d'etre of the tribunal which should objectively and professionally evaluate the arguments by both parties (employer and employees) and make the award based thereon". The tribunal, which met for some three weeks, resulted from a 55-day strike by public service workers in support of a 40 per cent pay hike demand for 1999 and no less than that amount for 2000. In contrast, the government's final offer before referring the dispute to arbitration, was some 9.2 per cent for 1999. The private sector, which would be relieved to know that the government will honour the pay award, although conscious of its implications for every sector of the society, was also involved in negotiations that led to the establishment of the three-member tribunal against the background of political and racial disturbances in Georgetown and serious, costly disruptions to commercial life that accompanied the strike action. A significant coincidence was that in sharp contrast to the majority decision of the Armstrong-led tribunal, another tribunal's report was being submitted proposing an award of a 12 per cent pay hike for teachers in the public sector. That tribunal was headed by the Guyanese Jesuit Superior and former President of the University of Guyana Workers Union, Fr. Malcolm Rodrigues. Guyanese public sector workers, estimated at 30,000, who had been grossly neglected by the previous People's National Congress (PNC) governments, while their unions suffered from paralysis of the spirit, remain among the lowest paid in the Caribbean Community, other than in Haiti. But with a change in government in October 1992, annual pay increases as well as allowances and benefits for some specific categories of workers became the norm under the government of the People's Progressive Party (PPP)/Civic, rising from US$26 million in 1993 to US$65 million by 1998. While it is normal for both parties involved in an arbitration tribunal to share the cost, the government had committed itself to bearing the full cost of the Armstrong-led tribunal. It is now considering, in the interest of fairness, to also waive the cost to the Guyana Teachers Union for the Rodrigues-led tribunal. The final costs for the tribunals are currently being assessed, including the fees to be paid. This, according to Labour Minister Jeffrey, is a minor consideration compared to the "enormous challenges we face in general pay increases for all categories of public sector workers, including the police..." Clearly, he said, some very hard decisions have to be made in terms of restructuring of the public sector and the retrenchment that the government has been "painfully seeking to avoid may now become inevitable. After all, there is only so much a government can do with very limited resources."
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