By Rehana Ahamad

UPWARDS of 400 employees attached to the Guyana Oil Company (GuyOil) are threatening to take industrial action in light of the company’s refusal to honour an agreement for salary increases in 2020.

This is according to President of the Clerical and Commercial Workers’ Union (CCWU) Sherwood Clarke, who said that when negotiations commenced in July last, the company had agreed to pay increases based on a performance-appraisal system.

“We received a letter dated September 10, 2020, which stated that the Board of Directors had an extraordinary meeting three days before, and that during the meeting, they agreed to pay salary increases using the pay-per-performance method.

“We recommended two methods –one was an across-the-board increase, and the other was based on a performance- appraisal system,” Clarke said.

He explained that after a new Board of Directors was installed at the oil company, the new management withdrew from the agreement. “This has caused great distress to workers,” Clarke said.

He explained that while many persons were home during the COVID-19 lockdown, GuyOil workers were providing essential services.
“GuyOil workers are considered frontline workers; they didn’t take days off and stay indoors, they continued their work,” Clarke lamented.

In addition to salary increases, the CCWU President said that the company had also agreed to pay Christmas bonuses.

“These are essential workers being denied; at the extraordinary meeting, they agreed that as long as the company made profits, the increases would be paid. They had their recent AGM and declared $2.9B as profit,” Clarke said.

The union president is calling on the oil company to resume discussions so that a mutually beneficial decision can be made.

“The union now is very disgruntled and disappointed in this negotiation, and workers will not accept this announcement by the management to not award an increase in salary in 2020.”

The workers, according to Clarke, have given the company an ultimatum.

“We told them that they had until December 18, 2020 to come back to the table to tell us something positive,” Clarke said.

With an expired ultimatum, Clarke said that workers are currently in talks about calling a countrywide strike.

Meanwhile, in an invited comment, Chairman of the new GuyOil Board of Directors, Trevor Bassoo related that 2020 had been a difficult year. He explained that with the impact of COVID-19, the company had found itself unable to deliver on its promises.

“The situation at this point in time does not allow us or permit us to issue any of those two specific forms of remuneration that the union requested,” Bassoo noted.

Bassoo said that outside of the specific requests, GuyOil has been considering other benefits for its staff. He declined to say what the other benefits were.

“From the inception, consideration has been given to our staff; we value them pretty much more than anything else, so throughout the decision process their well-being has been priority, but it really isn’t possible for this year,” Bassoo maintained.