Georgetown: The announcement late last week that Public Servants earning less than $500,000.00 per month are to be paid a “one-off, tax-free bonus of $25,000.00” comes against the backdrop of ongoing uncertainty over the status of the incomplete and outstanding wages and salaries negotiations between the Guyana Public Service Union (GPSU) and the Government of Guyana.
According to the GPSU, the Union finds the meager ‘Christmas freck’ gesture – not least the Finance Minister’s quixotic and decidedly indelicate remark that the paltry sum will help “ease the journey to the good life” to be both trite and insensitive.
In the first instance the so-called “tax free bonus” bears a conspicuous resemblance to the kind of arbitrary periodic handout to which Public Servants have long been relegated by their employer and which epitomizes the accustomed lack of regard for Public Servants. More than that, the arbitrariness of the decision raises, not for the first time, questions about the veracity of the political administration’s stated commitment to respect collective bargaining. We have little doubt that the expectation behind this gesture is that – particularly at this time of the year – the poorly compensated Public Servants, will feel some misplaced sense of gratitude for the decidedly modest ‘small piece’ that has been tacked on to their salaries. The union stated that perhaps Minister Jordan may wish to tell the union in greater detail about the extent to which the government’s gesture will “ease the journey” towards the ‘promised land.’
“The GPSU wishes to make it clear that the persistence of periodic handouts to Public Servants in a fashion that seeks to relegate them to mendicants cannot and will not be allowed to replace fair, honest and genuine collective bargaining. Even if, as now appears to be the case, the payment of the ‘Christmas freck’ now appears to be a fait accompli the Union wishes to inform the government that gestures of this kind only serve to further erode the self-esteem of the Guyana Public Service and take us further from the creation of an institution that can adequately serve the nation’s interests,” the union noted. “ It is the firm opinion of the Union that such diversionary tactics should be replaced by a swift return to the negotiating table to resume the 2016 bilateral negotiations on the wages, salaries, allowances and representation improvement in other conditions for Public Servants.”
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