President assures at training course opening...
Government to ensure better industrial relations climate
By Mark Ramotar
Guyana Chronicle
October 14, 2003
THE GOVERNMENT will continue striving to improve the country's industrial relations climate.
President Bharrat Jagdeo gave Guyanese that assurance yesterday when he spoke at the opening of a four-week training programme on industrial relations practice at the Umana Yana in Kingston.
It is being hosted by Guyana Agricultural and General Workers' Union (GAWU).
President Bharrat Jagdeo lauded GAWU for having the foresight and intuition to organize the training programme, which will be certified by the Mona School of Business Studies, University of the West Indies (UWI).
"I want to promise you that at the Government level we will continue to create a better climate for the practice of industrial relations," President Jagdeo told the opening ceremony. "What I found in Guyana is that many leaders of the trade union movement, and I'll be very frank here, have led to trade unions losing respect."
The industrial relations programme is expected to enable participants to develop an objective and analytical understanding of industrial relations, to develop an inter-disciplinary approach to the study of the course, to give practitioners a comparative and policy oriented appreciation of the new practices and challenges facing them in the conduct of industrial relations, to provide an overall perspective on and to make available critical and vital information pertinent to industrial relations.
GAWU is convening the course in collaboration with the Trade Union Education Institute (TUEI) of the University of the West Indies. It is being attended by middle-level officials and workers attached to GAWU among others.
According to President of GAWU, Mr. Komal Chand, participants during the course of the programme will be exposed to a mixture of teaching methods, including lectures, workshops, field trips and role-playing.
He said the lecturers - among whom are Dr. Roodal Moonilal, Employment Consultant and part-time lecturer at the UWI (St. Augustine); Dr. Noel Cowell, lecturer in Industrial Relations in the Department of Management Studies at UWI's Mona Campus, Jamaica; Mr. Rahim Bacchus, Jr., lecturer, Faculty of Law, UWI's Cave Hill Campus; Wade Mark, Trade Union Education Consultant of Trinidad and Tobago; and guest lecturers from industrial relations institutions in Guyana - will utilize audio-visual and multi-media interactive tools to stimulate learning and retention.
Chand also noted that students would be exposed to a wide syllabus of subject areas and topics from all elements of Collective Bargaining, Grievance Handling, Labour Law, Arbitration, ILO Convention to the History of the Caribbean Trade Union Movement and Trade Unionism. "In Guyana, the course will groom the union's future leaders in the foundation and development of trade unionism," he asserted.
Pointing towards the motto of GAWU - 'Discipline, Solidarity, Democracy' - President Jagdeo said if one were to examine the trade union movement in Guyana using those themes, then that person would find the trade union movement lacking.
Noting that creditability and fiscal discipline are important, Mr. Jagdeo questioned how any union can stand up and be respected when they do not have audited accounts for several years. "Their members are going to start questioning them and the public at large will not take them seriously," he said.
He also urged a more "collaborative" type of negotiations and not the "confrontational" type of relationships that has characterized trade union/employer relationships over the years.
Dr. Cowell spoke on the challenges facing industrial relations institutions in the Caribbean, noting that we are in a time of "great ferment" and where, in a number of respects, the Caribbean is pitted against the world in the struggle for market access and scarce development resources.
"It is a time for the social partners to come together and work in transforming our institutions so as to enable them to better serve the needs of our people," Dr. Cowell posited.
"While recognizing and respecting our differences, we have to reject adversarial posturing in favour of jointness and partnership (and) it is necessary to explore new alliances within our respective countries and within the region," he said.
"We must focus on new thinking, new forms of dialogue and new negotiating strategies. It is not a time for fighting each other, because in a number of respects, it is us against the world," he asserted.
Regarding the state of the unions in the region, Dr. Cowell said: "To use a cricketing analogy, the Caribbean trade union movement has been kept on the back foot in the face of what can be described as strident managerialism; for the most part it has been operating with traditional tools developed during its formative years and has had no effective answer to the anti-union strategies of the employer."
Another thought-provoking presentation was made Ms. Marva Phillips, Head of the TUEI based at Mona Campus, Jamaica. Also making brief remarks at the opening was Chairman of the Guyana Sugar Corporation (GUYSUCO), Mr. Vickram Oudit.
Among those attending the opening ceremony were Minister of Labour, Human Services and Social Security, Dr. Dale Bisnauth; Permanent Secretary in the Public Service Ministry, Dr. Nanda Gopaul; General Secretary of the Clerical and Commercial Workers' Union (CCWU), Mr. Grantley Culbard; Members of the Diplomatic Community; and officials of the trade union movement of Guyana.