THE Government of Guyana issued a statement on Friday urging sugar workers to partner with it to help put the almost crippled industry on its feet. No one denies that sugar forms the core of the Guyana being — from slavery though indentureship, and from plantocracy to nationalisation. Though considered “bitter,” sugar has been a major pillar of the Guyana economy, and has garnered critical foreign currency from export earnings.

The task of sugar workers has been daunting, as much of the field work is back-breaking and arduous. Yet, for almost two centuries, our workers persevered and made great advances in securing safer working conditions and better pay.

However, in the past two decades, the fortune of sugar has taken a dip with the reduction by over one-third of the preferential price of sugar on the European Union market. If that were alone a major blow, the dramatic and consistent drop in production has compounded Guyana’s misery.

Production fell from an average 320,000 tonnes between 2002 and 2004 to below 250,000 tons. In 2003, production fell to its lowest since 1940, with only 186,000 tonnes being produced.

At the same time, due to several factors including incompetence and political interference, the industry’s cost of production rose much higher than the market price for sugar, totalling over $50B in losses between 2010 and 2014. At the same time, keeping workers on the payroll was costing more, as the cost rose from $14.5B in 2010 to $20.5B in 2014, an increase of $6.3B or 43%.

In order to meet these costs, government was forced to divert sizeable sums of taxpayers’ money to bail the industry out and prevent collapse that would bring ruin to the 16,000-plus sugar workers.

It can be argued that the problems facing the sugar industry have been inherited from the previous administration. The “Turnaround Plan” “Business Plan” “The Way Forward” gave no answer for the decline. Sugar was in deep trouble by the time the coalition government took office in May, 2015. Its priority attention was how to save the jobs of sugar workers and breathe life into the dying industry.

Initially, the new government threw out a bail-out package amounting to $12B for this year, and may be ready to extend a similar life-line next year.

However, the key to further bail-outs is production.

Already, the industry is achieving set weekly targets for the first time in many years. It is in this context that we view as highly reckless and anti-worker the agitation by GAWU for a nationwide strike in the sugar industry.

The GAWU is part of the opposition, which has resolved to remove this government before its full five-year term. So a strike now would be seen as furtherance of this agenda, even if it would add to the woes of sugar workers by not giving them an opportunity to put bread on their families’ tables for the holiday season.

This is not a time for strikes. It is a time to produce every ounce of sugar, and to cash in on the available market whilst the industry grapples with the ways and means of becoming viable in the long term. It has been said that sugar is too big to fail; but it should never be said that, when sugar came to the crossroads, the workers did nothing to make it succeed.