Monday, March 11, 2019 was the date of one of the most anticipated St. Lucia Teachers’ Union meetings in recent memory. By last week, all the talk of corporal punishment suspension and the “lack of consultation by the education department” had reached a crescendo. The excitement clearly bubbled over into this week, as teachers from all over the island marched up Barnard Hill to their meeting place, the National Cultural Centre.
SLTU President Julian Monrose stood at the podium, white shirt falling above black trousers, his inscrutable executive seated onstage behind him. Anticipation was on every face before him and Monrose was programmed not to disappoint. “Colleagues,” he said, in his typically throaty tone, “there has been a lot of speculation. When we called this meeting, they said we’re meeting to discuss corporal punishment. You think that’s why we are here?”
The response from the crowd was a booming “Noooo!” “We are not here to talk about corporal punishment,” their leader reassured them. “It was over six years ago we got a salary increase!” More shouts, more punching the air, more hysteria. “We are here today to say we want the suffering over!” The message was clear: the meeting was about wages!
Nevertheless, for the next fifteen minutes or so, the SLTU president talked about corporal punishment. The Union had no problem with the decision to suspend corporal punishment in the nation’s schools. What concerned them was the way the suspension was handled by the Chastanet administration. “The Ministry of Education was disrespectful. It is the modus operandi of the Ministry of Education to do anything, anytime, anywhere, anyhow, without consulting the practitioners, the real practitioners of education!”
At the end of his delivery, as he opened the floor to the general membership, Monrose offered this reminder: “The St. Lucia Teachers’ Union is not a partisan political organisation. We don’t exist to further the cause of any political party and so therefore I will plead with all political operatives to go either on the market steps or on the William Peter Boulevard, or elsewhere, to make your partisan political points. We are in a situation with our employer, which just so happens to be the government, not a party. Let us deal with the issues. With that understanding, the floor is open.”
He then turned to attendant media representatives: “At this point I wish to thank the media for being here in such large numbers. You’ve been our friends, but there are times people must get into their own private bedroom to discuss their own business. I will ask that you cease recording and allow our teachers their privacy. I am declaring as chairman of this meeting that this section of the meeting is private and therefore all recording is disallowed.”
For once I chose to live dangerously. While my colleagues filed out of the auditorium, I stayed in my corner trying to be as inconspicuous as possible. Which was how I discovered the reason for the president’s little speech about political operatives in disguise. The first contribution from the floor addressed the corporal punishment issue. She was followed at the mic by a male teacher who said: “Before we move forward with this negotiation, I have an issue with the last one that I need the executive to address. At that earlier meeting Mr. Monrose hinted that we, the teachers, took a wage freeze. As far as I remember, we never met in this forum to discuss this issue . . .” The interrupters countered: “No, they met with us!”
The Trade Union Federation’s (TUF) now infamous 2013-2016 wage negotiations, referred to by the interrupted teacher as “the last one”, occurred when the Kenny Anthony administration was still in office. In a 2013 statement, the TUF’s President Julian Monrose, had relayed this message to his fellow Saint Lucians: “We are convinced that the government can reach a 6% salary increase for public servants without carrying out its threat to cut programmes which benefit the poor and the youth . . . The situation will not be resolved by the government arrogantly telling workers that it is 4% or nothing or by the workers insisting that it is their demands or nothing.”
Just a year later, Monrose would describe the TUF’s acceptance of a wage freeze as a “sacrifice” to benefit the nation during those tough economic times. As he put it: “The Federation conveyed to government its understanding of the current economic situation facing the country and was ready to assist by making certain sacrifices towards alleviation of the situation.”
The SLTU is a part of the TUF and so that decision was made for the teachers—without consultation. Back in 2014, this reporter, then a teacher, was present in the staffroom of the Babonneau Secondary School talking with colleagues about that very controversy. They angrily called out Monrose and his executive for unilaterally agreeing to terms offered by the SLP administration. Teachers island-wide shared that sentiment. At this week’s meeting, however, it seemed the more vocal were in the grip of amnesia. “Let me say that again,” said the man at the mic. “As I remember, regarding the wage freeze, we never met in this forum to discuss the issue. The executive took a decision on our behalf.”
He had a question: “I would like to know if this is the norm. Is it proper not to have consultation?” Addressing those at the head table he demanded “a response from the executive on this matter; whether this is a trend or whether we can expect it to continue, or whether this was an error and you are ready to apologise for what transpired”. At the end of his contribution the applause was muted. But he had made his point. Monrose took over the mic. To the obvious surprise of the majority of his audience, he said, referencing the earlier speaker: “You are correct.” With those three words, the SLTU president confirmed not only my own recollection of events, and that of the teacher who had bravely chosen to swim against the tide, but Monrose also rendered hypocritical the grumbling dissenters who had sought to drown out the voice of truth.
Monrose admitted, “There was not a meeting in 2013; there was not a mass meeting to discuss the matter of negotiations. The executive met at the time and felt it didn’t make a lot of sense to call teachers to a mass meeting just to tell them they were not going to get an increase.”
Monrose had clearly been knocked off his stride by the teacher’s question. The confident and brash speaker who had opened the meeting had been abruptly replaced by a deflated, stuttering, unsure figure at a loss how to deal with a tough question. Meanwhile, I was wondering: Is this the kind of exchange that the SLTU president wished to keep private? As to whether the teacher ever got a response to his question—that the 2013-2016 executive decision would become the norm—I cannot say for certain.
Not long after Monrose had spoken on the side of truth, his grim-faced first vice president reminded me that media personnel were not welcome during the section of the meeting in progress. It seems the SLTU considers the media to be friends only when we report what the organisation wants us to report. In other words, we’re friends only when we serve the SLTU’s purposes. Alas, that’s public relations, not journalism!
