Workers of Blairmont Estate today (October 16) held a picketing exercise outside of the Estate’s Administrative office to call on the Guyana Sugar Corporation Inc (GuySuCo) to demand a pay rise and fair treatment.
The workers, who have been on strike since October 14, are most peeved regarding the promotion of workers. According to the picketers, the estate, a few months ago employed a former manager of Rose Hall Estate as an artisan. They allege that the recently employed worker was given a promotion while other workers who have been in the estate’s employ for some time and have sought promotion are not being similarly treated. The workers shared that they learnt that the newly promoted employee was not required to undertake a necessary test to determine eligibility for promotion. In the sugar industry, artisans are required to undertake a test to assess their competence for upward movement.
From the GuySuCo’s point-of-view, the Union was informed that indeed the worker had recently taken the test and was successful hence the promotion. When asked to share the results of the test nothing was forthcoming. It was later said that the worker had taken the test while in the employ at Rose Hall and it was not necessary to have the test re-taken. The workers feel slighted as some of them had applied to be tested and yet they were not given the opportunity. The estate is now seeking to have those workers tested to determine their eligibility for promotion. The GAWU has always encouraged workers to seek promotion once they are able and capable.
The workers picketing exercise also heightened the call of all sugar workers for increased pay. As is now a well-known and sad reality, sugar workers have not benefitted from any rise in pay since the incumbent Administration took office in 2015. In that period, as the GAWU as mentioned on several occasions, sugar workers pay has fallen owing to a number of factors. That fact has placed them and their families in a precarious situation bearing in mind the heavy increase in the cost-of-living since workers have last gotten any pay rise.
The workers, as we have said previously, are a critical and essential element to the industry’s success. They are the ultimate producers of the wealth that accrues to the Corporation and the country as a whole. The need for them to be treated similarly with their counterparts in other areas of the State cannot be overemphasized in anyway. It is saddening to record what could only be described as disdainful treatment of the nation’s sugar workers in recent times.
