High Court Judge Sandil Kissoon Wednesday said he would be delivering on Friday his ruling in the case brought by the Guyana Teachers Union (GTU) against the government over its plan to deduct money from teachers who participated in strike action earlier this year.
In addition, the union wants a court ruling on the decision by the Irfaan Ali administration to discontinue deducting union dues from the salaries of teachers for the union.
The judge gave notice of his ruling after hearing submissions from lawyers from both sides and the cross examination of witnesses.
Attorney General, Anil Nandlall argued that the GTU’s case is incurably detective, telling the court that a significant portion of the arguments put forward by both the attorneys for the union do not form part of their pleadings, including the issue of collective bargaining.
Addressing the substantive issue of whether the teachers should be paid despite engaging in industrial action, the Attorney General told the Court that while teachers, like other categories of workers, have the freedom to strike, they do not have the right to strike, and therefore would have to face the consequences of their action.
“I believe that I demonstrated with great clarity, on examining the constitution, the 1966 Constitution, the 1980 Constitution, the 2001 Constitution and all the changes that have taken place in relation to trade unions, and in relation to rights to strike and freedom to strike that there is no right to strike in Guyana, there is a freedom to strike.
“The Constitution has a right to demonstrate, a right to assemble and a freedom to strike, so the draftsman using language differently. Then you have the right of the employer. The Constitution also protects the employer’s right to property, so how could you advocate that you have a right to pay when you have not worked,” Nandlall said.
But Senior Counsel Roysdale Forde, argued that the government’s failure to engage the GTU in collective bargaining for well over three years, despite being presented with a multi-year proposal since 2020, created the conditions for industrial action, and as such, the principle of “no work, no pay” is not applicable in this instance.
“Today, the essence of my argument established the principle of no work, no pay was inapplicable to Guyana. Secondly, to establish that the role and functioning of the Chief Labour Officer and the Minister of Labour aggravated the circumstances which led to the strike,” Forde told reporters at the conclusion of the legal arguments.
Forde said that following the break down in talks between the GTU and the Ministry of Education, the union sought the intervention of the Chief Labour Officer for the initiation of conciliation and later arbitration, but to no avail.
Forde told the Court that the evidence presented to the Court, during the cross examination of the Chief Education Officer (CEO) Saddam Hussain, revealed that no real negotiation took place, and many of the measures reportedly implemented by the Education Ministry were unilaterally done, and not in keeping with the proposals of the Union.
“I believe that the evidence which we received from the Chief Education Officer clearly establishes that the Government acted, on numerous instances, in a dictatorial and unilateral manner.
“The government proceeded over the last three years to impose wage increases, and those are matters, which form part of the collective bargaining proposal, which had been submitted, and those matters were never dealt at the bargaining table.
“There were other instances where the Government unilaterally proceeded to implement and adopt certain items without the context of a collective bargaining taking place,” Forde said.
