Next to the legendary Hubert Nathaniel Critchlow, Joseph Henry Pollydore was Guy-ana’s most outstanding trade unionist of the 20th century, although for entirely different reasons. Critchlow was an initiator and a strategist. Pollydore was a negotiator and a tactician. Critchlow was the pioneer of the national labour movement. Pollydore was the engineer who tried to prevent the breakdown (and the breakup) of the labour movement.
Born and bred in the small, poor African village of Catherine, Mahaicony, 65km from Georgetown on the East Coast of Demerara, the son of a carpenter, the unsophisticated Joseph Pollydore seemed always to have preserved the rural values of simplicity and straightforwardness. Conser-vative by nature and cautious by choice, he was self- taught and self-assured and nourished a countrified suspicion of the slick urban types with whom he dealt and among whom he moved in the trade union movement.
He continued to improve his education in accounting and business manage- ment through correspondence courses and local tuition after attending the Catherine Methodist Primary School. Later, while at the Guyana Trade Union Congress (GTUC), he would attend several seminars and conferences in China, Germany, the USA, the former USSR, and at the Ruskin College in the UK.
His working life started at age 17 as a clerk on the railway which ran through his village. He remained on the railway, then a section of the Transport and Harbours Department (T&HD), for about 15 years before moving to the Shipping Division where he spent another 10 years as a purser.
Joseph Pollydore’s in-volvement with the trade union movement started while he was working at the T&HD. In March 1938, he became a founding member of the Transport Workers Union (TWU) of British Guiana, only the fifth union to be registered in this country. It was as the TWU’s general secretary that he had his first clash with authority while he was employed at the T&HD Stores Division in Georgetown.
The then General Man-ager, Colonel Robert V Teare, a Britisher whom Ashton Chase desribes as “a veritable martinet,” tried to eradicate the numerous abuses including revenue leakages, malingering, pilfering, excessive claims for overtime pay and sick leave which were the pastimes of many workers in the department. In trying to do this, Col Teare came up against the newly- formed TWU and attempted, in 1948, to disperse its most militant executives.
Among others, he selected Pollydore (who had taken to writing letters on the workers’ behalf to the General Manager) for what was intended to be administrative exile to Bartica and, from there, to Issano, in the hinterland.
The union called a four-day strike to prevent the transfers, paralyzing the country’s coastal transport services. In the end, Colonel Teare departed and the union became immensely popular.
The TWU strike was an important event in Pollydore’s rise to national prominence. The following year, the TWU entered an agreement for the introduction of the ‘check-off’ system for the deduction of union dues from workers’ wages, enabling it to collect enough revenue to buy its own building, ‘Transport House’ in Urquhart street, Georgetown, open a library and publish a monthly newsletter. Pollydore, though not the president, held the unseen but steady hand that steered the TWU to stability and success. He became a sort of eminence grise behind the colourful leader.
The TWU strike also had a galvanizing effect on other government workers. In April 1950, several unions, including the Transport Workers Union, Nurses’ Union, Government Employees Union, Post Office Workers Union and others came together under the Federation of Unions of Government Employees (FUGE) to strengthen their ability to bargain with their common employer, the government. Again, under the presidency of the flamboyant Andrew Jackson, Joseph Pollydore as general secretary built FUGE into a formidable front for advancing workers’ wages and rights.
Joseph Pollydore was to see the Trades Union Con-gress suffer two near-fatal rifts during his six decades in the labour movement.
The first rift, in 1953, came in the aftermath of the suspension of the constitution when the six elected ministers of the original PPP were expelled from office in October. The next month, the ‘old’ British Guiana Trade Union Congress (BGTUC) which was aligned to the pro-USSR World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU) was disbanded. Under the influence of the pro-USA International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) and more directly its branch, the Inter- American Regional Organ-ization of Workers (Organ-izacion Regional Interameri-cana de Trabajadores (ORIT)) and its Caribbean Area Division (CADORIT), a ‘new’ TUC was established. Pollydore was part of the lurch towards the ICFTU, becoming a member of the executive council, and later, Vice- President, of ORIT. It was on the basis of his positions and reputation in the TWU and FUGE, and his affiliation to ORIT, that Joseph Pollydore was able to win election to the post of General Secretary of the Guyana Trade Union Con-gress on a full-time basis.
The second serious rift in TUC solidarity occurred 35 years later in aftermath of the PNC administration’s Economic Recovery Pro-gramme and its negotiations with the IMF.
A gulf opened between loyal pro-PNC unions and the militant (then) opposition unions. Even Pollydore’s astuteness could not hold the GTUC together and a split occurred when seven unions opposed to the administration’s policies and the GTUC’s apparent support for them formed the Federation of Independent Trade Unions of Guyana (FITUG) in 1988. This, arguably, was the severest test of Pollydore’s stewardship.
To his credit, even though he was already 80 years old, he continued to strive to bring the two sides back together.
During his decades with the GTUC, Pollydore never held a position of leadership. He was concerned mainly with formulating representations to various agencies with which GTUC affiliates were involved in disputes and submitting proposals to the government for legislative action. He held the general secretary’s office for 25 years and, afterwards, remained as adviser and consultant until 1999. But, though instrumental in influencing the government to take a number of minor policy decisions, he was publicly critical of the administration.
In February 1980, at the height of the political and economic crisis, the GTUC launched its monthly Voice of Labour newspaper which Pollydore used to attack the PNC administration’s wages policies and constitutional reform proposals. He was an inveterate critic of any measure, from any quarter, that hurt workers.
Harold Lutchman cites Pollydore in 1972 as asking sarcastically, “... with all the disenchantment and cynicism in the country... the time has come for the Government to explain exactly what it means by the slogan it has popularised: Making the Small Man a Real Man.” Later, under the PNC administration’s Economic Recovery Programme in 1988, Nanda Gopaul cites Pollydore as criticising pro-PNC GTUC executive members for behaving in a manner that was “in sharp contrast with protest action by trade unions everywhere,” and called on trade unions in Guyana to “seize every opportunity open to them to protest those harsh IMF prescriptions which are making life increasingly difficult for the workers.”
Joseph Pollydore’s service to the labour movement was mainly as a general secretary.
He was the eminence grise, moving behind the scenes, avoiding disputes, averting disaster, preventing ruptures, sealing breaches and bringing his considerable age and formidable experience to bear on the search for consensus among contentious unions. He was a conciliator rather than an agitator and preferred to be seen as an ‘honest broker,’ regarded by all sides as an outspoken and principled man of moderation.
It was no surprise that such a man as Joseph Pollydore received the Order of the British Empire (OBE); the Golden Arrow of Achievement (AA); the Cacique’s Crown of Honour (CCH); and the Order of Roraima (OR) for his long and invaluable service in the trade union movement.