RUSSIAN-owned Bauxite Company of Guyana Incorporated (BCGI), on Wednesday, announced the laying off of another 146 employees effective Thursday, January 30, citing the blockage of the Berbice River by workers as the reason for its action.
Some 142 workers were laid off by the company last week.

After the layoff notice last week, employees of the company blocked the Berbice River, preventing the movement of bauxite, by the company, out of Guyana from its Kurubuka Mines. The union has made a number of demands that they expect to be addressed before any ‘let-up’ can be considered.

“We wish to advise that we are forced to further reduce operations and to lay off employees due to adverse operating circumstances including shipment interruption due to the blockage of the Berbice River,” read the notice signed by the company’s Managing Director, Gennadii Derevyanko.

The notice goes on to note that the employees will be “recalled as soon as the situation returns to normal” and that individual letters would be mailed to the respective employees.
Last week, the laying off of the 142 employees was attributed to the company having to reduce operations due to a “shortage of fuel”. The company is said to have claimed that the fuel was short due to it not being granted tax exemption by the Guyana Revenue Authority.
GRA Commissioner-General, Godfrey Statia, has maintained that the GRA has never withheld tax exemption from the company for importation of fuel for its operations.

Last Monday, the Department of Labour met separately with the company, and its employees’ union – the Guyana Bauxite and General Workers Union. At the meeting, the company representatives said they would be willing to rehire the 142 employees but it depended on the employees unblocking the river.

The union, on the other hand, listed three demands that it says must be addressed before it would be willing to facilitate advising the workers to remove the blockage.
The demands include the rehiring of the 142 workers; the addressing of compensation for two employees who were hospitalised after suffering electric shock while on duty; and the addressing of prolonged negotiations over salary increases for workers.

In a statement issued on Monday, the Ministry of Social Protection (MoSP), under which the Department of Labour falls, established that it has taken “the position that the workers were improperly laid off by the Company and should therefore be recalled immediately”.
The Labour Department also advised the union that it was illegal to block the river and should therefore take steps to unblock it.

The Department also submitted that the laying off of the workers was separate and apart from all other issues, but all would be addressed in phases, with the recall of the workers being of paramount importance.

“In the meantime, the department is contemplating convening a meeting with the parties to determine the way forward with outstanding negotiations for a new Collective Labour Agreement (CLA) of which wages and salaries is a component,” the ministry said in the statement.

The current situation between the company and its employees is reminiscent of what took place last year when the company initially fired 60 workers and subsequently 31 more when the employees commenced strike action over an arbitrarily imposed one per cent salary increase.

The employees had at that time also taken to blocking the river as leverage to have their grievances addressed. In a small victory for the workers, the strike action came to an end with all the workers being reinstated and the company agreeing to recognise the workers’ union– the Guyana Bauxite and General Workers Union (GBGWU)– as the legal bargaining body for the employees.

Relations between the company and the union have been uneasy since 2009 when the company arbitrarily fired some 59 workers, who were never rehired and the issue was never resolved.