This morning (November 28, 2018), workers of Albion and Uitvlugt Estates downed tools and staged spirited picketing exercises outside the respective estates as they called on the state-owned Guyana Sugar Corporation Inc (GuySuCo) and, moreso, the Government of Guyana to approve a pay rise for them. Sugar workers remain the only group of workers who have not received any rise in pay since the incumbent Government took office over three years ago. It is no secret that there has been a sharp rise in the cost-of-living over that period.
In fact in the long time that has elapsed since the workers have not benefitted from any rise in pay, several burdensome policies have been implemented. For instance, when the workers last received a pay rise, now over 1,500 days ago,they hadn’t to pay value added taxes (VAT) on essential items like water,electricity and private medical care; they weren’t required to pay an environmental tax; the cost of fuel and public transportation were lower; they hadn’t to pay increased water and phone rates, among the several burdens that have now fallen on their backs. That apart when the workers last got a pay rise they received a state grant for their school aged children, and they were not required to pay VAT on essential school supplies and food items.
With those serious challenges they have had to contend with, their work opportunities have markedly decline while their incentives like the Weekly Production Incentive (WPI) have been curtailed and their Annual Production Incentive (API), which dates back to colonial times, has been suspended. The magnitude of these and other decisions have seen their earnings falling by a whopping 36 per cent between 2014 and 2017. This substantial fall in income taken together with the massive rise in living costs have certainly pushed workers and their families closer to the poverty line.
It is indeed dismaying that the workers are being treated so disdainfully vis-à-vis their colleagues in other areas of the State who themselves, in spite of pay increases, are finding the times of today difficult. One can imagine the situation that, therefore, confronts the sugar workers and their families.Instructively, the last time workers were denied a pay increase was over three decades ago was in 1983 and 1984 when the Forbes Burnham administration, atthat time, did not approve increases not only for the sugar workers but all public sector workers. The treatment of the sugar workers in recent times reeks of blatant and clear discrimination. Again the GAWU must ask what crime these workers committed to deserve such treatment being meted out to them. Is it that the Administration believes the contrived notion contained in its unreleased White Paper on Sugar dated March, 2017 that the workers are the opposition supporters?While this is far from the truth, it seems that this warped thinking could be a major factor in the current attitude of the State towards them.
It is clear that the time is now for the sugar workers to receive a fair pay increase.
