…calls out workers on week-long strike action

DESPITE being on a crusade against the decision to downsize the Guyana Sugar Corporation, which resulted in the laying off of some workers, the Guyana Agricultural and General Workers’ Union (GAWU) is up in arms against the company for re-employing of the laid off workers.

Earlier this week, the Guyana Chronicle reported that workers of Blairmont Estate 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 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.

However, in a statement on Friday, GuySuCo said the strike is against a decision made by management to re-employ a former Rose Hall Estate employee as a skilled tradesman and upon his confirmation, was appointed to a Class One in the factory. The striking employees are claiming there are other employees who were overlooked for the position. According to GuySuCo’s statement, management requested from the union a list of the names of those who claimed to be overlooked. “So far, at all the meetings with management, the Union Officer and Shop Stewards have failed to identify any of the persons who claimed to have applied for reclassification in adherence to the Corporation’s Regrading and Reclassification Scheme and were denied.”

In fact, GuySuCo said the estate’s records indicated that no employee applied through the scheme to be upgraded in 2017 and only three electricians applied in 2018.

GAWU DOUBLE STANDARDS
“The GAWU which have been vocal through picketing and strikes against the sugar workers losing their jobs due to closure of the estates, is now supporting a counteraction on re-engaging a former employee from Rose Hall Estate at Blairmont. They are making calls for the re-engaged employee’s appointment to be rescinded immediately,” GuySUCO said.

The sugar corporation said GAWU will have to decide which side of the fence it wants to stand, noting that their current action and support for the striking workers against a colleague within the same bargaining unit will only serve to divide the workforce.

“The corporation is of the view that the current actions by the Blairmont factory employees are unwarranted, and that if the employees had concerns, then the extant Recognition and Avoidance of Disputes Agreement between the parties should have guided the process to have such concerns addressed. Unfortunately, in this instance, that mechanism was not followed by the local union representatives and striking employees.”

GuySuCo said it should be noted that just a few weeks ago, the GAWU, in a press release, criticised the corporation for not achieving its second crop sugar production targets. The ongoing strike will now compound the situation as critical opportunity time to complete the second crop is being lost.

The corporation said that from the onset of this strike, the estate management has been engaging the union’s local field officer along with the shop stewards, listening to their concerns and providing clarifications where necessary. Those engagements however, have so far proved futile, since the employees continue to withhold their labour.

Officers from the corporation’s head office have also gotten involved and on October 16, 2019, the officers informed their counterparts from the union that once normalcy resumes at the estate, the parties would have met on October 17, 2019 to discuss the employees’ concerns.

However, as of Thursday morning, the GAWU central officials were present on the ground and rather than encouraging the employees to resume duty, they were actively participating in a picketing exercise which prevented the scheduled meeting. As a result of the strike, the routine factory maintenance that is normally done on Monday’s has been delayed until the employees resume work.

According to GuySuCo currently, there are approximately 329 punts of canes harvested and are in the Mill Dock waiting to be processed. There are also an additional 347 punts of burnt canes in the fields waiting to be loaded. Some of those canes were burnt since Sunday October 13, and are deteriorating in quality and the corporation will be unable to recover the sucrose (sugar).

Further, while some of their colleague cane harvesters were “not required” during the week, all 857 of the cane harvesters on roll were “not required” yesterday October 17, 2019 due to the unavailability of empty punts to be sent to the fields. The strike continues to have a devastating effect on the corporation’s output and financial position when it is already in a critical state with limited finance to pay wages and salaries.