Govt to appeal court’s refusal to stay order on deduction of GTU dues – AG

The Guyana Government will be appealing a recent decision of the Appeal Court, which has refused to grant a stay application on a High Court order for the State to continue deducting membership dues from teachers’ salaries on behalf of the Guyana Teachers’ Union.

Back in April 2024, High Court Judge, Justice Sandil Kissoon, had issued an order, mandating the State to continue the deduction and remittance of union dues to the GTU – a decision that the State appealed.

On Tuesday, Court of Appeal judge, Justice Dawn Gregory, rejected the State’s attempt to stay the High Court order, contending that the GTU would suffer undue prejudice if the stay was granted and that the balance of justice lies in the favour of Union.

Arguing that the GTU is the only union that enjoys this remittance service and that precedence was set in a previous case involving the Guyana Public Service Union (GPSU) 25 years ago, Attorney General Anil Nandlall, S.C., contend that unions have a responsibility to collect their own dues.

“You can’t compel me to do you a favour unless the law creates an obligation… The act that you’re compelling must have legal underpinning. There must be some duty created in law before a court of law can compel the performance of that duty. The government is now being saddled with a responsibility and a duty now, in law, to collect union dues and pay it over the union from the members of the union. That’s the union’s business.”

“We are going to challenge that decision. We have to challenge that decision by going before three judges of [the Appeal] Court – that’s the procedure, and we will do that. That’s the only way we’ll get to the Caribbean Court of Justice, where we eventually would like to go,” Nandlall posited during his programme – Issues in the News – on Tuesday evening.

Recalling that the same Appeal Court judge had presided over the GPSU case, which relieved government of taking on the responsibility of collecting dues on behalf of the union, the Attorney General stated, “The learning judge found that we have good grounds of appeal, that our appeal has likelihood of success, that our appeal raises several important and crucial issues of law but found, strangely, that the justice of the case doesn’t warrant a stay to be granted.”

According to Nandlall, government had ceased offering this service since February 2024 and the union did not collapse.

He also clarified that the State is not in contempt regarding the High Court order, revealing it is the GTU that is holding up its compliance with the court order, which explicitly directs the government to cease its discontinuation of the deduction of union dues from wages and salaries of “members of the Guyana Teachers Union.”

“Not all teachers are members of the Guyana Teachers’ Union [and] the judge specifically said ‘members of the Guyana Teachers’ Union’ – it is those salaries that the judge ordered that the deductions must be made from and remitted to the union,” the Attorney General stressed.

While the GTU had responded, stating that the Education Ministry should use its own database to make the deductions and comply with the order, AG Nandlall contended that this cannot be done.

“How can we deduct union dues from all teachers when the judge says you must deduct only from members of the unions? …The contention now being made in the public domain that the government is violating the court order is baseless, is unfounded and is malicious because I have two letters in my hands, where we’re asking for the information so there can be compliance with the order, and the information has not been forthcoming.”

“So, how do you want the government to comply [by] deducting wrongly from people’s salaries and then the government will then be liable… Because if we deduct, wrongly, dues from people’s salary… we would be committing an illegal act, possibly a criminal act.”