Close to 400 cane cutters who were attached to the now defunct Wales Sugar Estate may never receive severance pay, as acting Guyana Sugar Corporation (GuySuCo) Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Paul Bhim has declared that these workers were not entitled to those benefits.
Bhim maintains that GuySuCo has honoured all its obligations regarding the payment of severance at the Wales Estate. He told the Department of Public Information (DPI) that cane cutters were offered jobs at the Uitvlugt Estate and they were at risk of self-termination because of their refusal to take up this offer.
The acting CEO argued that this could take effect based on the Collective Labour Agreement signed between GuySuCo and the Guyana Agricultural and General Workers Union (GAWU).
Acting GuySuCo CEO Paul Bhim
But GAWU has argued that the workers were being pressured by GuySuCo when they were aware that the Uitvlugt Estate was located more than 20 miles from Wales. The Union still contends that this move is contrary to the Termination of Employment and Severance Pay Act.
Bhim, however, claimed that GAWU’s position was groundless since labour turn-out at that estate was below full capacity, while there continued to be a need for cane harvesters. “Our contention is that we require the workers at Uitvlugt. Uitvlugt has got a huge shortage of cane harvesters. We are still insisting that we need them to go, don’t forget about 120 of them have actually gone,” he added.
The acting CEO also claimed that the number of days spent harvesting canes during the last crop at Uitvlugt has more to do with the number of canes in the fields rather than the number of workers who were employed. “It just depends on the amount of cane that we have in the field,” he explained.
According to Bhim, in the last crop, the turnout was about 58-60 per cent. He said, “So, it wasn’t as if we had sufficient cane harvesters on a daily basis to take the cane off because the factory ended up being out of cane on an average, 20 hours a week probably 30 at times.”
Regardless of these calls, the workers are demanding a severance payment and at recent protest actions held at the Ministry of the Presidency and the High Court, they have called for a date to be set for a court hearing.
They promised to put pressure on both Government and the court to move swiftly to have the matter involving the former cane harvesters of that estate heard as speedily as possible.
GAWU’s lawyer, Ashton Chase had compiled and filed documents for the matter regarding the non-payment of severance packages to hundreds of sugar workers to be called up at the High Court. However, close to two years have passed and the matter is still to be assigned to a judge. The workers have lamented that even as the court system has been slow, their Union has not been pushing the issue in the public domain so as to bring about a swift response.
Meanwhile, Agriculture Minister Noel Holder told this newspaper recently that Government has already taken a position and it would allow the courts to decide on whether severance should be paid or not.
GAWU had indicated that during discussions with President David Granger and Cabinet, it had vowed to withdraw the court matter for any guarantee that the Wales workers would receive their severance.
Asked if consideration would be given to the issue on that basis, Holder reiterated that the matter was before the courts. He, however, stated that careful consideration has to be done, because making such a move could potentially cause the Government to be placed in a bad situation.
Holder hinted that if Government were to pay the Wales cane cutters severance, then every other worker that have been transferred to another estate would propose the same arguments and demand pay. “Therefore, the severance would be $5 billion to now $10 billion,” he told this newspaper.
Of the approximately 4,800 workers dismissed in the latest firings only 1600 fired sugar workers who are eligible to receive $500,000 or less in severance pay have been paid in full, others would be paid 50 per cent of the amounts due to them.
By refusing to adhere to the “Termination of Employment and Severance Pay Act” the government is treating the Wales Canecutters like indentured servants.
