Trade unions have colonized the workers!
Kaieteur News – If you are serious about having a long career with little risk of removal, then you should consider becoming a trade union leader. It’s one of the few jobs in Guyana, where you can occupy a job for as long as you want.
Becoming a trade unionist guarantees you a lifelong job, with foreign trips and the obvious possibility of having your face featured in the May Day newspapers. Unions used to be Workers’ Day as a show of power. Today it has been reduced to a farce and turned into one big fair.
Some trade union leaders have dropped anchor in their posts. Some of them have been around for eternity and when they pass the Great Beyond, there is no guarantee that their successors will be any different.
It is harder to displace a trade unionist than it is to get a bald man with a head removed. Some of them have grown roots in their unions and do not seem to know when to retire.
The trade unions are certainly not going to advocate term limits. Their leaders enjoy the security of unlimited tenure. Sure enough, they can be eliminated through elections. But, how often does this happen?
The Guyana Federation of Independent Trade Unions (FITUG) was once fighting for democracy. But so far, it has failed – not because it never sought to – to impose democracy in the Guyana Trade Union Congress (GTUC).
It is an anomaly that the largest trade union in Guyana, the Guyana Agricultural and General Workers Union (GAWU), has never held the Presidency of the Trades Union Congress. The rules have always been stacked against that union to deny it the Presidency. If anything reveals the undemocratic nature of the trade union movement, it is this fact.
Trade unions no longer have any teeth. To use a popular phrase, they are ‘toothless poodles.’ They have survived their usefulness to the working class and have become burdensome rather than helpful to workers.
The employers are now wearing the upper hand. The strike weapon has become more of a political weapon; it has been spoiled as a measure of industrial relations.
Self-interest and conflicts of interest have become evident in the trade union movement. Trade union leaders continue to emerge as candidates for political parties. One leading trade union figure went so far as to endorse a political party. Those practices used to be acceptable during the Cold War when trade unions were expected to side with working class parties. Unfortunately, the Cold War is over but no one told some of these trade unionists.
Workers are reunited with trade unions. The trade unions exercise control over workers who have little say in the jobs adopted by some unions. The trade union movement is an albatross around the necks of the working class.
The trade union movement has little to show for its more than 100 years of existence. It’s been a failed movement. To think that the politicians, who so many like to denounce as corrupt, could have done more than the trade union is a shocking indictment against the workers’ movement.
If there is any gift owed to the workers of this county, it is to break free from the shackles of trade unions. There is nothing that the trade unions can do for the workers, that the workers together and without the union cannot do for themselves. If the truth were told, workers are far better off without their unions.
It’s time for the workers to break the gravy line for some of these union leaders. It is time for them to assert their right to refuse to be part of an organization that has done little to no value to employees. But its leaders have achieved a comfortable life within trade unions.
The trade union movement no longer has anything to offer workers. These unions are “like a dog without a bite.” They have passed their best and their best has never been good enough.
There will be no renaissance in the trade union movement. Revision is not going to happen. The old-timers will hold on to power for dear life and frustrate the noble youths who should have had a chance.
No one takes trade union leaders seriously anymore. They are not public opinion shapers. And this is in the digital age, when even the most ignorant have their say on social media.
Workers have only their union duties to lose. It is time to free themselves from the new colonists – the trade union movement.
(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of this newspaper.)