THE DAYS OF TRADE UNION MIGHT ARE OVER!
December 4, 2014, By KNews, Filed Under Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom, Source - Kaieteur News
The Guyana Public Service Union (GPSU) is like a marabunta without a sting or a dog without a bite. It has no sting or bite. Its glory days are behind it. Those glory days were short lived.
In 1989, the GPSU was part of the Federation of Independent Trade Unions of Guyana (FITUG) which called a general strike against the effects of the Economic Recovery Programme (ERP). The dictatorial Hoyte administration considered the actions of the GPSU as a betrayal. Hoyte brought pressure to bear on sections of the leadership of the union. One of the union’s leading lights was forced to flee into exile. After that GPSU was never a force to be reckoned with in FITUG. Hoyte had broken its back and destroyed its militancy.
When Janet Jagan was President, the GPSU launched another grand hurrah. It called a strike demanding wage increases above what the government was offering. The union went on strike for 57 days. Disgraceful methods were employed by the union to press for its demands. But the biggest mistake was the alliances that were forged, alliances that politicized the strike and exposed the unions to charges of pursuing a political agenda.
The strike however did have its successes. The union secured arbitration. This resulted in the only substantive increases that public servants have enjoyed since 1993.
However, the union paid a huge price for the strike and the unwise alliances that it forged during that process. The union leadership ended up under siege from the membership on the afternoon the strike was called off following the agreement for arbitration. A police raid on the union’s headquarters found Molotov cocktails within the building, leading to further charges that the strike had been infiltrated by political elements. The end of the strike was also met with discord and division by sections of the membership. This affected the union afterwards.
But the real blow came when the government took action in the Courts that led to problems with the agency shop agreement and collection of union dues. The union suffered a severe decline in its finances from which it has never recovered. The PPP broke its back just like the PNC had done in 1989. The only difference is that after 1989, the union regrouped. But it has and will never regroup from the effects of the actions taken after the 57-day strike.
But there were also other factors that conspired against the union. The first of these is the decline of the trade union movement around the world. While both the PNC and the PPP may have weakened the GPSU, worldwide, neo-liberalism flattened the might of trade unions. After Ronald Reagan, the age of the big unions ended. Labour is no longer the force it used to be and perhaps will never again be a force to be reckoned with, at least not in my or your lifetime. The GPSU is therefore operating in a context of a weakened trade union movement worldwide, not just in Guyana where divisions have always affected working class solidarity unity.
Another factor that has further crippled the GPSU is the changing face of public sector employment. Public sector workers in Guyana bore the brunt of the hardships initiated under the ERP. And they reacted. The public service was emptied of critical human resources because after the ERP was unleashed on the Guyanese working class, some workers could not afford the transportation to get to work. And therefore many of them moved away from the public sector. Most of those who followed those who left opted for new arrangements, contract employment.
The vast majority of workers in the public service today now prefer this arrangement, because most of them are not looking for civil service careers. They are there because the pay is better and they are there to use the experience as a stepping stone for better jobs elsewhere.
Contract workers, most of who are not unionized, now far outnumber traditional public servants. And this is by choice, not design. As such, even if a strike is called by the GPSU and every unionized worker responds, it will not shut down the public service. Some places will obviously be more affected than others, but the public service will in general operate normally, as it did for the most part during the 57-day strike.
The GPSU may therefore be upset that the government for a record 13th year in a row has imposed salary increases without negotiations. But the fact is that the government can risk this because the unionized workers in the public sector are a minority. The days of union-power are over, and the GPSU is simply too financially constrained to sustain a strike.
Source - http://www.kaieteurnewsonline....nion-might-are-over/
