Attorney General (AG) and Minister of Legal Affairs, Anil Nandlall says the Guyana Government cannot negotiate salary increases for teachers covering the years prior to 2024.
“The reason is more commonsensical than anything else; the government operates in a budgetary cycle. What is passed is passed. The government has no budgetary resources to increase wages for years that are bygone.
“The government can negotiate in good faith in relation to future increases,” Nandlall said during his recently aired, “Issues in the News” programme.
“How can you ask a government in 2024 to negotiate wage increases for years prior to 2024? More importantly, the teachers have already benefitted from salary increases for those years (prior to 2024), which they accepted unreservedly…I don’t know which government in 2024 can seriously – after passing a budget for 2024 – negotiate for salary increases for years already gone by,” the AG said.
The AG’s comment comes a day after the Guyana Teachers’ Union (GTU) reportedly walked away from the negotiation table after its push to haggle for increases between 2019 and 2023 was refused. The meeting between the union and the Education Ministry was organized after a High Court Judge ordered mediation.
The union took the government to court after the Education Ministry threatened to cut the salaries of striking teachers. The GTU also wants an order to compel the administration to continue taking union dues from teachers and passing it on to the worker representative body. A Conservatory Order was later made to maintain the status-quo until the matters are resolved.
Nandlall said that while he does not know what the future holds for engagements between the union the government, the case raises some important legal issues which he would like to see determined. Of importance, the AG said, case before the court will certainly “one way or the other” bring clarity to commonly asked question: Are striking employees entitled to pay for days not worked?
“There seems to be the view that persons can strike and withhold their labour and the employer must still pay…You cannot leave these important issues hanging,” Nandlall stressed.
Both the union and the government are expected to put in their legal submissions and the Judge has fixed March 20, 2024, for the parties to present oral arguments to the court.
These teachers are greedy. How many of them have qualifications or common sense? Many are there because they get a monthly salary without doing anything.
There are good teachers among the lot, but if they say anything, it is racism.