THE FALL OF THE TRADE UNION MOVEMENT AND ITS CONSEQUENCES

The complaints of workers at Aurora Gold Mines brings into focus the weakening capacity of the trade union movement in Guyana. The early era of trade union activity in the Caribbean took place amidst intense worker unrest in the 1930s which triggered a British investigation published as the Moyne Report in 1945. Moyne said that for the “labouring population, mere subsistence was increasingly problematic.”  The unrest flowed from the heightened poverty in that period involving some trade union activity. 

The British Guiana Labour Union (BGLU), founded in 1919 by Hubert Nathaniel Critchlow to represent dock workers, was the first trade union established in British Guiana and the first to be legally registered in the British Caribbean. It established links with the Caribbean and the wider international trade union movement. The Manpower Citizens Association (MPCA) was established in 1937 by Mohamed Ayube Edun to represent sugar workers and eventually superseded the BGLU in membership. It was known for its militance in its early years. The British Guiana Transport Workers Union (BGTWU) was formed in 1938 to represent employees of the Transport and Harbours Department, which was then the largest government agency. It became the most militant of the early trade unions which called the successful “Teare” strike in 1948 that inflicted one of the earliest defeats against the colonial authorities. The Guiana Industrial Workers Union (GIWU) was established in 1946 to seek representation for sugar workers, as the MPCA had become a company union. Trade unionism and politics merged in June 16, 1948, when five workers were shot in the back and killed while on strike. The widespread demonstrations were led by activists of the Political Affairs Committee (PAC) and strongly supported by members of the BGTWU. 

A major excuse for the suspension of the constitution in 1953 was the proposal of the Government to pass legislation, the Labour Relations Bill, to provide for the recognition of trade unions by employers, which the Wagner Act in the US provides for. The restrictions placed on PPP leaders, the imprisonment of some and the division of the national movement in 1955, led to the domination of conservative forces in the trade union movement. By 1961, when the plot grew to remove the PPP Government, the trade union movement opposed a second Labour Relations Bill in 1962, was subverted by US intelligence agencies and became stridently anti-communist and anti-PPP. After the PNC came to office in 1964, in coalition with the United Force, and later on its own, the trade union movement, by and large, succumbed to PNC’s political blandishments. The exception was Guyana Agricultural Workers Union (GAWU), the successor to BGIWU, which was linked to the PPP, and was by far the most militant trade union. The struggle for recognition was long, arduous, punishing and repressive and succeeded only in 1976.

The recognition of GAWU, while officially welcomed by the Trade Union Congress (TUC), was greeted by rules which gave higher numerical representation to small unions and deliberately discriminated against large unions. These rigged rules, which are still in force, relegated GAWU to a minority on the TUC executive, even though its size entitled it to a majority. Nevertheless, from about this time, the militancy of GAWU, the Guyana Bauxite  and General Workers Union (GB&GWU) and the Guyana Mine Workers Union (GMWU), National Association of Agricultura, Commercial and Industrial Employees (NAACIE), and the Clerical and Commercial Workers Union (CCWU), the Public Service Union (PSU) under President George Daniels, responded to the severe economic crises, repressive and authoritarian rule, the referendum proposals to force through a rigged constitution through the illegitimate parliament, and intense political and civil society activity, was a high point in this period. While the assassination of Walter Rodney and the passage of the new constitution in 1980 dampened this militancy thereafter, democratic rule returned in 1992. 

By 1988, however, the strains in the TUC caused by its failure to democratize, resulted in 1988 in the departure of GAWU, NAACIE and CCWU from the TUC and their formation of the Federation of Independent Trade Unions of Guyana (FITUG).  FITUG suspended activities shortly thereafter but resumed in 1993. The 1992-1997 PPP/C Government gave priority to the views of trade unions and finally, after forty years, passed the Trade Union Recognition Act. However, the militancy and drive for expansion by the trade union movement, after its initial heightened profile in 1992-1997, has completely disappeared as the recognition of its importance as a vital partner by governmental authorities has declined.  

The decline of the trade union movement has resulted in the workers at the Aurora Gold Mines having no union representation necessitating the Ministry of Labour having to intervene to do the work that a trade union ought to have done a long time ago. Today, in a rapidly growing economy, Guyana needs a rapidly growing and militant trade union movement to defend and protect the rights and interests of workers at Aurora Gold Mines and in hundreds of businesses countrywide. Unless the dynamism and militancy of the trade union movement at this critical time in Guyana’s history returns, and it holds employers to account with the support of the Government, basic rights and protections of workers will disappear.