Stabroek Business has been reliably informed that the two trade unions credited with setting up the single largest business operation in the history of the labour movement in Guyana are contemplating legal action against the company for alleged breaches of the agreement between the two parties.
This newspaper has learnt that the Union of Agricultural and Allied Workers (UAAW) and the National Union of Public Service Employees (NUPSE) may be seeking legal advice arising out of the failure of the United Associates Security and Domestic Services Inc. (UAS&DS) to honour an agreement to pay to the two unions sums of monies representing union dues for security guards employed by the company.
According to information reaching Stabroek Business the two unions which, in November 2000 established the UAS&DS to assume responsibility for providing security services at state premises, including schools, hospitals, health centres and regional offices in the country’s ten administrative regions, are owed monies amounting to several months worth of union dues and are now experiencing difficulties in financing their own operations.
While Stabroek Business has been unable to secure a comment from any official of either of the unions, it is understood that following fruitless attempts to collect the outstanding amounts the issue of legal action is now under active consideration.
The reported move by the two unions to take the company to court is the latest twist in a bizarre saga that has seen the security company, once the single largest company of its kind, reduced to no more than a handful of contracts.
Over time, the UAS&DS has become entangled in controversies associated with the alleged padding of its payroll, the non-payment of millions of dollars in National Insurance Scheme deductions and persistent late payment of employees.
Observers have persistently questioned what is widely considered in labour circles to be an anomaly of security guards being members of a union that employed them. In fact, guards employed by the company have told this newspaper that membership of one of the two unions was compulsory and that employees were not required to sign documentation agreeing to have union dues deducted from their salaries.
Day to day management of the company has been in the hands of NUPSE President Robert Johnson since the establishment of the entity with the late General Secretary of the UAAW, Seelo Baichan serving as Chairman of the company’s Board of Directors with less control over the day to day running of the company.
This newspaper has been unable to discover more about what it understands to have been the intermittent withholding by the company of union dues owing to the two unions.
However, Stabroek Business has learnt that one of the two unions has clashed with the management of the UAS&DS over the outstanding amounts.
According to reports union dues may have reached as high as $500,000 per month during the heyday of the company when it employed as many as 2,000 guards. Stabroek Business understands, however, that since the loss of all of its state contracts earlier this year the company claims that its takings from union dues amounts to just over $100,000.
