After an announcement that the Guyana Sugar Corporation (GuySuCo) will not be considering wage increases for workers until 2020, the workers united in a one-day strike to express their disapproval on Thursday.
These sugar workers are demanding better treatment
At the Albion Estate, the workers demonstrated their disagreement with the position GuySuCo has taken by staging a protest. Close to 70 workers held placards bearing anti-GuySuCo slogans and chanted, “No money, no wuk”, along the Corentyne Highway.
According to Guyana Agricultural and General Workers Union (GAWU) General Council Member Fizal Inderdat, the claims being made by GuySuCo are “unrealistic”.
“Based on figures that GuySuCo put forward to the Union, you find that they inflating them. When they say that they owe so much debt is not so much they owe. They say that they owe $89 billion, but is not $89 billion in solid cash they owe; when you check the liability of GuySuCo, with all the buildings that they have, it is $32 billion they owe…and the executive in GuySuCo, $339 million they drawing a year, and that is only for about 12 of them, so that is about $48 million a year one person getting, [but] still GuySuCo saying that they don’t have money,” he said.
For the first half of this year, Guyana experienced 3.2 per cent inflation. In 2015, GuySuCo paid $21.6 billion in wages. This year, it will pay some $19 billion as wages to its workers at seven estates – Skeldon, Albion, Rosehall, Uitvlugt, Enmore and Wales.
“That $2.5 billion could have come in and give the workers something. In order to give each worker one per cent increase, it will cost GuySuCo $181 million. We put in a proposal for eight per cent, but we are willing to negotiate with them,” the General Council Member noted.
Meanwhile, workers’ representative Stephen Inderdat opined that the workers are suffering and deserve a wage increase.
He said, “Look at the public servants, those people have received their benefits.
We are not saying that they should not have, they are working class people; we in the sugar also deserve more than what we have here.”
At the other Berbice estates, there was no grinding as work also came to a standstill.
Wales strike
Meanwhile, several workers of Wales Sugar Estate, West Bank Demerara, on Thursday morning gathered at the factory gate, where they downed tools to protest unpaid wage increases and severance packages.
Workers informed this publication that they would not perform duties for the remainder of this week and were prepared to withhold their services for an extended period if they were not paid increases as other categories of public servants.
“GuySuCo [has] money to pay, because they using $1.5 billion to make a road from here to Uitvlugt and they budget $500 million for diversification,” the Wales Field Secretary explained.
Nonetheless, the protesting workers related that they were uncertain of their future and that of their families, as they have received official word on the diversification plans for Wales.
“Since we understand that the Wales Estate gan close this year-end, we want to know what time we gan receive our severance,” a worker expressed.
Many workers said that they had no intention of transferring to Uitvlugt Estate, as was offered by GuySuCo.
“We ain’t going no Uitvlugt; I employ a Wales Estate and will remain a Wales Estate,” another worker declared.
Some even decried the earnings of GuySuCo’s Board.
GAWU President Komal Chand late Thursday confirmed that the majority of workers supported the one-day strike action. Guyana Times, however, understands that workers at the Uitvlugt Estate did not fully support the move.
It was only last year that GuySuCo had claimed that it was not going to address the issue of wage increases for workers until 2017. However, when GAWU met with the Sugar Corporation to commence discussions, GuySuCo deferred the date for increases to 2020.
