WORKERS of Skeldon Estate returned to work on Thursday night paving the way for union and management of to go back to the table for talks. This was revealed by President of the Guyana Agricultural and General Workers Union (GAWU) Komal Chand. He said that there were no terms attached to this resumption of work.
The Guyana Sugar Corporation (GUYSUCO) earlier had urged the workers return to work.
The strike by the workers stemmed from measures that the corporation took to sanction staff in the wake of a fire at the Skeldon Factory on August 7 which caused extensive damage to the bagasse conveyor belt. The fire occurred on the said day the Skeldon Estate was slated to commence production for its second crop of 2010.
“Based on the extent of the damage it is clear that the blaze started much earlier than the time it was first reported, which was at 03:00 hours of the said day,” the company stated in a press release.
“A full investigation was conducted which revealed that the incident resulted because of gross negligence, caused extensive damage where remedial work will cost millions of dollars, coupled with the loss of three days production,” the release stated.
As a result of the incident, management took disciplinary action against employees, both managerial and non-managerial, resulting in two senior employees being interdicted from duty, one dismissed, one suspended and two non-managerial employees suspended and three non-managerial employees dismissed.
Following this action, on Tuesday factory workers decided to engage in strike against the decision to dismiss their colleagues.
GUYSUCO said that the strike action by the factory workers “is at a most inopportune time, when there is a very large crop (480,000 tonnes of canes) to be harvested which has already been affected by poor weather and a second crop production target of 34,000 tonnes of sugar for the Skeldon Factory.”
According to the company, management respects the procedure of engaging workers in keeping with the established principles of the grievance procedure and as such management is willing to do same, providing that there is a resumption of work.
“It must be noted that at this point in time, over 650 punts of cane are in a state of readiness for crushing which will yield approximately 4,000 tonnes of sugar,” GUYSUCO said on Tuesday.
“The Corporation once again reaffirms its call for workers to ensure they seek to solve their concerns through dialogue with officials before resorting to strike action, so as to ensure that critical opportunity days for harvesting and production are not lost, more so because of the current weather pattern and the significant amount of canes to be harvested across the Industry,” the company said in its release.