As the Grenada Union of Teachers (GUT) marks 113 years of advocating for the island nation’s educators, a bitter dispute over persistent, months-long salary delays has brought long-simmering tensions between the union and the Ministry of Education to a head.
According to GUT President Jude Bartholomew, dozens of teachers across Grenada have waited as long as eight months to receive pay they have already earned, with complaints about late and incomplete salaries first emerging as far back as September 2025. The union has repeatedly escalated the issue to top government bodies, including the Public Service Commission, the Department of Public Administration, the Education Minister and the Permanent Secretary, but Bartholomew says officials have failed to act with urgency.
The conflict intensified last Friday, after the Ministry of Education released an official statement responding to the union’s public allegations of “extremely late payments.” In the statement, ministry officials claimed they had only received a formal list of 17 affected teachers with partial payment issues between September 2025 and April 2026. They asserted that all 17 teachers are now receiving their regular base salaries, that most outstanding back payments have already been processed, and that remaining claims would be resolved during the June 2026 payroll cycle.
But Bartholomew has pushed back sharply against the ministry’s account, accusing officials of downplaying the scale of the crisis and misleading the public. “We receive complaints every day which are sent to the ministry,” he told reporters at a press briefing last Friday. “So, it’s much more than 17. And whether it is 17 teachers, 100, 500 teachers or one teacher, that is not the essence of the matter. You should move speedily to pay the teachers.”
The GUT president also noted that while the ministry has temporarily suspended some in-office services starting June 3 due to facility challenges, this logistical issue cannot explain payment delays that have stretched on for months. He criticized the government’s statement for omitting critical context about how long educators have struggled with the issue, arguing that officials have deliberately framed the dispute to minimize the union’s concerns.
For the GUT, which has represented Grenada’s teaching workforce for more than a century, the fight is about more than just correcting payroll errors. Months of delayed pay have placed severe financial strain on working educators who continue showing up to teach while waiting for owed compensation, and have severely damaged staff morale across the country’s education system. Bartholomew emphasized that educators deserve timely payment for their work, and called on officials to resolve all outstanding claims immediately rather than deflecting or downplaying the ongoing crisis.