…demand pay hike and fair treatment

WORKERS of the Blairmont Estate, on Wednesday, held a picketing exercise outside of the estate’s administrative office to demand from the Guyana Sugar Corporation Inc. (GuySuCo) a pay rise and fair treatment.

According to a press release from the Guyana Agricultural and General Workers Union (GAWU), the workers have been on strike since October 14. They are said to be protesting the corporation’s alleged promotion of one worker over others whom the workers felt were more deserving.

The release said that the protesting workers feel slighted “as some of them had applied to be tested and yet they were not given the opportunity.”
“The GAWU has always encouraged workers to seek promotion once they are able and capable,” the release said.

On the need for increased wages for the worker, the release said. “As is now a well-known and sad reality, sugar workers have not benefitted from any rise in pay since the incumbent Administration took office in 2015. In that period, as the GAWU, as mentioned on several occasions, sugar workers’ pay has fallen owing to a number of factors. That fact has placed them and their families in a precarious situation bearing in mind the heavy increase in the cost-of-living since workers have last gotten any pay rise,” the release said.

“The workers, as we have said previously, are a critical and essential element to the industry’s success. They are the ultimate producers of the wealth that accrues to the Corporation and the country as a whole,” GAWU said.

The union pointed out that the need for sugar workers to be treated similarly with their counterparts in other areas of the State “cannot be overemphasized in anyway.”