Cane cutters from Rose Hall, assigned to Albion Estate when the former was shuttered by the APNU/AFC Government in 2017, downed cutlasses and protested last Friday. It appeared to be a “wildcat” strike since their union GAWU was not around and had not given the customary notice to management. But it was clear that the action could not have come as a surprise to the management of GuySuCo. Workers’ grievances had been made known from the beginning of the truncated crop, but the attempt to address them was obviously not successful.
Some of the workers, organised as Gang 17B, claimed that the weight of the cane that they were paid to cut and load at the rate of $1100/tonne was being recorded short at the factory and consequently, their wages on most days amounted to less than the $2000/day minimum wage. This claim of “short weight” was a perennial one in the industry and decades ago it was agreed that a Sugar Union representative would scrutinise the scale readings during factory operations. There needs to be a clarification as to whether this system remains in place.
Another grievance expressed was that because of the extensive flooding of the cane fields from excessive rainfall, vines and other “obstacles” to the cutting of the canes had become inordinate. This resulted in extra effort and time being expended to complete the daily “task” of two-three beds of cane, harvested by three cane cutters, which would normally produce three tonnes per bed. This was also an old complaint going back to colonial times and over the years, the unions have wrested the right of extra compensation for “obstacles”. The workers claim this is not being paid.
But it appeared that this grievance of “short weight” had been raised before and management attributed it to the individual stalks of cane not being as heavy as before the floods due to new stalks sprouting from adventitious roots. The same volume of cane in the punts would not necessarily deliver the weights obtained before. The “solution” by management, which would have had to be accepted by GAWU, the workers’ union, was that after cutting and loading their tonnes of cane from 5am in the morning to 12 noon, the cane cutters would then have to move on to other tasks such as cleaning drains to “top up” their wages. This “solution” should have been a non-starter since after six hours of literally back-breaking labour, very few workers would have had the energy to accomplish the new tasks.
The following day, the 300-plus workers of 17B were joined by another 800-plus cane cutters from Albion proper and they protested along the Albion Road by blocking it and starting some small fires. Even though the management quarters are at the end of the same road near the factory, it took the intervention of the Region Six Police Deputy Commander to bring the Manager of the estate to parley with the aggrieved workers at the Albion Complex to defuse the situation. The Estate’s management and GuySuCo officials were supposed to have met yesterday to arrive at a mutual modus vivendi.
We believe that there has to be a comprehensive appraisal of the workers’ grievances balanced against the Corporation’s constraints to achieve an equitable settlement. The workers cannot be penalised for the poor cane yields and must be compensated for the additional labour expended to deliver the required tonnage. The extra compensation can be incorporated into the old “obstacle” agreement. But just as critical is the shortened crop from 20 to 12 weeks. Even in “normal” times, the sugar workers barely have money saved from “crop time” to carry them over to the next crop. This time they are already in the red.
There must be some arrangement to provide work for all of them during the “off” period, maybe to help resuscitate Rose Hall. Management, after all, has already bemoaned the depleted labour force and must not make workers feel exploited.
