WHEN driving down to the end of Supenaam, it is difficult to avoid the workers of Buck Hall sawmill, listening to their complaints of exploitation by unscrupulous employers.
Most of these workers were employees of A. Mazaharally and Sons Ltd and they knew me as the former Field Secretary of Guyana Agricultural and General Workers Union (GAWU).
In 2000, I joined them up as members of GAWU, and I was to hold regular meetings with them on Saturdays. At that time they wanted to change their union – the Guyana Labour Union (GLU) as they became disillusioned with that union. As they put it, it demonstrated a failure to be a militant instrument to fight for their rights. They therefore decided to become members of the Guyana Agricultural and General Workers Union ( GAWU).
It is equally difficult to avoid noticing that they were unionised and were being paid below the government stipulated minimum wages and salaries.
They told me that they were being paid $1,700 per day and they had to pay for their own food, only sleeping accommodation was provided and they needed a union badly to represent their causes.
With the growing exploitation of these workers, the bell is tolling for a vibrant union and the relations between labour and capital.
History records that GAWU was brought here for the first time on the Essequibo Coast, at Caricom Rice Mills Ltd by me after a long and hard battle, when the Guyana Rice Milling and Marketing Authority was divested on Friday May 17, 1991.
The primary aim was to expand the union to different parts and industry on the Essequibo Coast where there was no union. In my tenure I made inroads at Kayman Sankar and Co. Ltd, Hampton Court, A. Mazaharally and Sons Ltd, Supenaam, Anna Regina Town Council, and the guava factory at Queenstown.
Their forms were handed over to the organising secretary of the union in Regent Street, Georgetown, where they were being destroyed after the union’s head office was burnt down.
Only one poll was held and the union lost to the GPSU because there was no follow-up and bad public relations with the Town Council workers with the field secretary who succeeded me after my resignation with the union.
Since then the union did not expand and more workers are being retrenched or dismissed from the sole bargaining agent, Caricom Rice Mills Ltd. GAWU has a good chance of unionising these Buck Hall workers if the field secretary works hard.
MOHAMED KHAN
Former GAWU Field Secretary
