The protracted industrial dispute which has affected both the Kwakwani and Aroaima operations of the Bauxite Company of Guyana Inc. (BCGI) is eventually likely to threaten the very future of the company unless the Ministry of Labour intervenes aggressively to bring an end to the impasse, President of the Guyana Bauxite and General Workers Union (GB&GWU) Charles Sampson told Stabroek Business in a telephone interview on Tuesday.
Communication between the union and the company to end the dispute initiated on November 22 to back the workers’ demand for a pay increase came to a shuddering halt on December 1 after the company’s Russian General Manager Sergey Kostyuk issued a letter terminating the Collective Labour Agreement and signalling BCGI’s intention to derecognize the union.
Sampson says that his subsequent letters to BCGI to discuss terms of resumption have gone unanswered and that around 80 workers dismissed by the company remain off the job. He said that the company has since imposed a 6.5 per cent pay increase.
Asked whether the union had considered its next move in circumstances where communication with the company had now been effectively cut off Sampson said that the idea of moving to the courts to overturn the company’s “unilateral termination of the Collective Labour Agreement” had been discussed but declined to say that legal steps were imminent. He said that the union had been looking to the Ministry of Labour to provide “effective intervention” to end the impasse but that it felt that the Ministry was “dragging its feet” on the issue.
And according to Sampson the longer-term viability of BCGI’s bauxite mining operations could be threatened by the fact that its dismissal of workers who took industrial action was likely to affect key elements of the company’s operations. Sampson, himself a former bauxite worker at Linden told Stabroek Business that he believed that the company’s operations in the mines would have been significantly affected by the dismissals. Specifically, Sampson said that stripping operations in the mines which must precede the mining of bauxite could slow down significantly. “Once the mining process eventually catches up with the rate of stripping we could conceivably reach a point where there is no bauxite to be mined,” he added.
Sampson said that the union was fully aware of the economic backdrop against which the dispute continues to unfold and that it was concerned that a state of normalcy be restored at Kwakwani and Aroaima. “We are working towards finding acceptable ways of bringing this dispute to an end but we cannot do so in the face of the posture that the company has taken.
On December 7th following the company’s termination of the Collective Labour Agreement Sampson wrote to the General Manager accusing RUSAL, the Russian–owned majority shareholder in BCGI of “reckless adventurism” and charging that the company was ‘being used indirectly to violate the laws of Guyana and discriminate against some sections of the Guyanese work force.”
In his letter Sampson asserts that BCGI “has no authority to terminate the Collective Labour Agreement entered into between the company and the GB&GWU citing International Labour Organization Convention (87) Article (4) which states that “workers and employers’ organizations shall not be liable to be dissolved or suspended by administrative authority.” The letter also cites various other sections of the ILO Convention regarding the dismissal of workers who are officers of a trade union.
In the letter the union also places the company “on immediate notice” that it is “available to discuss terms of resumption as it relates to all employees of BCGI including those unlawfully and vindictively dismissed and suspended.” Sampson conceded, however, that the failure of the company to respond to his December 7th letter and to subsequent communication was “not a good sign.”
Indications that the Union was seeking to move towards a conciliatory posture emerged in yet another letter dispatched to BCGI earlier this week in which it said that it was ready to meet with the company “with or without the assistance of the Ministry of Labour” in an effort to “expeditiously seek to have the situation return to normalcy.” In the matter of the threat by BCGI to de-recognize the Union, Sampson told Stabroek News that he could not say what the status of that matter was. “They have told us that they are taking steps to de-recognize the Union. That is as much as we know.”
Meanwhile, the union President hinted that the industrial dispute could take a new twist “if the company remains intransigent” since the union has already begun to brief its members employed by Oldendorff, the company responsible for BCGI’s shipping operations. “We have spoken to our workers at Oldendorff and they are aware of the situation. I am not suggesting that we are about to go down that road.
I am simply pointing to the possible broader implications of the situation,” Sampson said.
RUSAL top brass posture threatening
future of company – GB&GWU President
