…not tied to Guysuco production targets – CEO Raj Singh
THE Guyana Agricultural and General Workers Union (GAWU) and the Guyana Sugar Corporation Inc (GuySuCo) concluded negotiations on Tuesday, resulting in sugar workers being awarded a five per cent pay-rise with effect from January 01, 2011. According to a press release from GAWU, last July, workers across the industry were paid another five per cent rise retroactive to January 01, 2011.
“The corporation had been demanding that this year’s (2011) sugar target must be achieved as a pre-condition for the five per cent increase in the rate-of-pay to be effected from January 01, 2011,” GAWU said.
It is recalled that President Bharrat Jagdeo intervened late last year when the cash-strapped corporation contended that no increase in wages was possible.
But in a comment to the Guyana Chronicle yesterday, Deputy CEO of GuySuCo, Rajaindra Singh, said that this year’s agreement with the union is not tied to any production target.
He noted however that the company will try its best to achieve the target or come close to it, in order to be able to sustain the increased wages.
Singh said that the union accepted the five percent and that agreement will be concretised at 12.30 hours today at the LBI Estate.
Further, Singh said that the president’s one-off payment of five percent late last year is to be made permanent.
GAWU said that this year is the first time in six years that the corporation and the union reached an accord at bilateral negotiations.
“There was the intervention by arbitrators, conciliators from the Ministry of Labour and the executive president during those past years. It is also the first time since collective bargaining was restored between the union and the corporation in 1989, when wage-settlement was reached months before the end of the year,” said GAWU in its release.
GAWU said its 45-strong negotiation team, including elected delegates of the rank-and file, unanimously approved the five per cent pay increase, notwithstanding the union’s original claim of 12 percent.
“Members of the negotiating team paid cognizance to the audited statement of the corporation for 2010, and the management accounts as at May 31, 2011, which indicate that the cash-strapped corporation, for the first five months of this year, is indebted to creditors and bankers to the tune of the over six billion dollars,” said GAWU.
It said GuySuCo is expecting that this year’s revenue arising from molasses and sugar production, which target was revised in early July to 282,712 from 298,879 tonnes set at the beginning of the year, would enable it to break even at the end of the year.
“In the course of the negotiation, the union insisted that the corporation furnish all relevant information to allow the union’s negotiators to be fully acquainted with facts and that the full process of the negotiations be fully respected. The union was wary that an acceptance of the corporation’s five per cent offer should not be accepted automatically without the completion of the process, notwithstanding its sister union, the National Association of Clerical Commercial and Industrial Employees (NAACIE), by agreement dated July 08, 2011, approved the five per cent wage/salary increase,” it said.
The union turned its attention to the continued issues plaguing the new Skeldon Sugar Factory, which invariably hold back production. “GAWU takes this opportunity to insist that the corporation’s board of directors and its management team be tireless in putting the new factory right, so that the estate’s targeted yearly production of 110,000 tonnes would be realised by the end of 2012, the newly set date, ” GAWU said.
The union said that special attention must also be paid to ensure that the current field expansion work is progressing within the approved time-frame, and that the field layout, adequate roads, irrigation canals, drainage trenches are properly constructed.
“These are among other concerns of the union and we take the opportunity, in the interest of the industry and the workers, to urge that such concerns be addressed with consistency and dispatch,” he said.
“We look forward, in the coming period, that other outstanding issues of the union can be addressed in an amicable and genuinely co-operative atmosphere,” GAWU said.