The Georgetown Mayor and City Council has signed a Collective Bargaining Agreement with the Guyana Labour Union (GLU) paving the way for city workers to benefit from improved working conditions.
The agreement covers the period January 1, 2026 to December 31, 2027. It outlines improved wages, salaries, and conditions of employment for fixed and unfixed workers of the Council.
Key provisions include ensuring minimum wage levels are no less than those paid within the wider public sector for comparable work, and allowing the Union to negotiate appropriate rates for its members based on job requirements.
It also formalizes a standard forty-hour work week and clearly defined working hours for municipal staff, including pump operations, sluice attendants, and security personnel.
City Mayor, Alfred Mentore said the Municipality was pleased to sign the agreement with the Union, noting that the General Secretary of the Guyana Labour Union Carvin Duncan has been making “solid” representation on behalf of the municipal workers.
“I am grateful and happy we could reach to this stage. We know the last time we met, it was a lot more contentious than this but we were able to work to come to the finality of this agreement, and it is only now for us to ink it with our signatures to move the process forward for the next two years,” the Mayor said.
General Secretary of the Guyana Labour Union, Carvil Duncan said the agreement was long in the pipeline. He explained that for almost five years, the GLU attempted to hammer out the agreement with the Municipality, but there was little to no movement.
“This agreement exercise started over five years ago. It passed through two or three mayors, I could recall and about three town clerks and they were all promising, faithfully, that they will have it done. But they did nothing in the sense that what they were doing, whenever we send the draft, they sent a counter proposal. So, they were using a delaying tactic, which I was conscience of, for not having this agreement signed. Even when the present mayor was the deputy, the mayor then had faithfully said I will have this thing signed but then he encountered a series of obstacles from the administration,” Duncan said.
He said thankfully, the present council was determined to have the agreement reached, though there were some difficulties.
“We eventually reached a stage where both of us realized that what we were in fact doing was in the interest of the council and in the interest of the workers,” Duncan said.
In a statement, the Ministry of Labour and Manpower Planning said it was pleased to facilitate the signing of the Collective Labour Agreement between the Municipality and the Union.
It said the agreement represents a major step forward in strengthening labour relations and improving the welfare of municipal workers, noting that it followed years of unsuccessful negotiations, which prompted the Ministry to begin a formal conciliation process.
The Labour Ministry said during that engagement, it became clear that there were gaps between the positions advanced by the Council and the Union.
As a result, the parties returned to bilateral dialogue, and within one week, an agreement was reached to the benefit of workers.
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