Over the weekend, the Government upped its salary increase offer to teachers to 10%, days after offering a 9% increase. But teachers are not prepared to accept the latest salary increase offer, and want their union to continue pushing for a much higher increase.
Today, General Secretary of the Guyana Teachers’ Union (GTU), Coretta McDonald said teachers have long indicated that the union should accept no less than a 25% salary increase offer.
In an interview with News Source today, Ms. McDonald said accepting a 10% salary increase for teachers would go against the mandate given by the nation’s teachers to the Union.
McDonald said in laying out their demands, the teachers took into consideration several factors, including the fact that the Union had agreed to shelve its original 2019-2023 proposal in keeping with a demand by the Government.
“Our teachers would have given us a mandate that we accept nothing less than one, they said double figures; and they went further to say, it shouldn’t be anything less than 25%. And they are saying that based on these facts: cost of living is way above their heads; two, inflation; and three, because the government would have forced us to throw aside our 2019-2023 proposal, they are thinking they should be highly compensated,” McDonald said.
According to the GTU General Secretary, teachers have also pointed out that nurses and doctors as well as members of the joint services, were all provided with comprehensive financial packages.
Following the end of a 75-day strike that crippled the public education system, the Union and the Ministry of Education commenced fresh negotiations in July with focus on new multi-year proposal for the period 2024-2026.
Since then, the Education Ministry has put forward a number of proposed increases ranging from 7% to 9% to counter the 39.5% proposed by the Union for 2024.
However, those counter-proposals were all rejected by the Union.
However, following negotiations on Thursday, the Union, through its President Mark Lyte, was reportedly informed by the Government that its final counter-proposal would be a 10% salary increase for 2024, along with an 8% increase for next year and a 9% increase for 2026 as part of a multi-year package.
It was against this background that the GTU General Council met on Friday.
“They did agree to approve that [the 10%] and I think it was based on the fact of how it was put over to them with regards to the 10% offering, and of course you know, our agreement doesn’t only deal with the salary increases, it deals with several other issues. And so, I think it is because of what was said to General Council they agreed that while we were going to have several other non-salaried benefits, that it was okay to accept the 10%. But when that issue was further broken down to them, to say look, this aspect of the non-salaried issue was not agreed on, this one was not agreed on, this one is still yet to be confirmed, this one is still yet to be discussed, General Council members then started retracting, retracting,” McDonald explained.
A number of teachers have also taken to social media to voice their rejection of the latest offer, while pointing out that just last Friday, the National Assembly approved more than $40B in supplementary funding to complement the Government’s $1.1 trillion National Budget that was passed months ago.
The General Council of the GTU has now started widespread consultation with unions members on the offers from the Government.
“The Union is now going to officially meet with its members to get from them exactly, where they want us to be in terms of the double figure because we recognize that our figures keep changing and changing and so, we have to now get a clear mandate from our members to say to the negotiation’s team this is where we want you to be, this what we want you to ask for, and if you are going to move from there, we would want for you to move maybe one step behind or two steps behind but you are not going further than that. That’s the mandate we are going to be getting from our members at this time,” McDonald explained.
The Union is expected to meet with the Education Ministry on Wednesday to continue the negotiations based on the mandate given to it by its members.
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