The Guyana Agricultural and General Workers Union (GAWU) has followed several press reports which focused on the various community meetings organized by the Guyana Sugar Corporation Inc (GuySuCo) at a number of estates. Those meetings we recognized from the pictures appearing in the media seem to be very poorly attended despite what we understand are great efforts by the Management to organize and encourage workers to attend. We wonder whether the Corporation doesn’t find it strange that its highly-marketed encounters see just a handful of workers in attendance.
From all appearances it seems that the chickens are coming home to roost. The actions of the Corporation in the last two (2) years have not been helpful in maintaining the generally positive relations between the Company and the workers and their representative organisations. Certainly, workers being forced to work at their 2014 rates-of-pay in year 2017; or the significant curtailing of their Annual Production Incentive (API) in 2015 and its outright denial in 2016; or certain changes to the Weekly Production Incentive (WPI) scheme significantly restricting workers benefitting from the scheme; or the denial of workers the opportunity to obtain trade union education or to be granted paid-release to attend their Union’s Congress; or the haughty and arrogant approach taken to their concerns at the workplace, among other things, have all not been helpful in encouraging a positive approach to the industry’s ‘best minds’.
From the press reports, we have recognized that the Management continues to lament the turnout of cane cutters but does not seem to offer any rationale whatsoever for the situation. Certainly, it seems GuySuCo’s ‘best minds’ are more reactive than proactive. Though turnout is said to be around 60 per cent we hasten to ask GuySuCo what percentage of cane cutters qualified for Holiday-with-Pay (HWP) benefit in the 2017 first crop and the 2016 first and second crops. It should be noted that in order for workers to receive this benefit they (the workers) must work a certain number of days each week or accumulatively over the crop. The sharing of such data we believe would be instructive in bringing greater clarity to the matter.
It is also a known fact that the industry does not offer year-round work. For instance, the 2017 second crop will see estates operating for not more than sixteen (16) weeks. When the first crop which lasted about ten (10) weeks is taken into account it means that workers would only be offered in-crop employment for about half of the year. This is a far cry from what prevailed in the past when the two (2) crops lasted about thirty-five (35) to thirty-eight (38) weeks per year. Even in the cropping period, they are uncertain about the situation they would face when they arrive to work and whether their rights would be respected. The workers, quite obviously, will seek to secure alternative employment in order to augment their incomes and maintain their families. Undoubtedly workers commitment, when taken together with assault on their benefits and threats to their livelihood they now face, will obviously wane.
This situation is not new or unique to the sugar industry and it is almost like déjà vu. We recall a similar situation prevailed in the latter 1980’s and the workers returned to work when their rates-of-pay and benefits were aligned with reality in the early 1990’s. Even before that, the sugar barons allocated abandoned cane fields to workers to pursue peasant farming in order to assist them during the out-of-crop periods. It is perplexing that the Corporation having recruited in recent times several individuals who were associated with the industry in the pre and post nationalization period of 1976 have not recognized this reality and seek to employ corrective measures, but rather they seek to embrace policies that have pushed, and will continue to push, workers away from the sugar company. No wonder, the New GuySuCo Community Outreach Programme is so sparsely attended.
