GuySuCo yesterday honoured its commitment to pay sugar workers their three percent retroactive pay hike before Christmas, even as GAWU failed in its bid to have the money be exempted from tax.

On Wednesday, officials of the Guyana Agricultural and General Workers Union (GAWU) and sugar workers picketed in front of the Finance Ministry yesterday afternoon calling for the tax free increase.

General Secretary of GAWU, Seepaul Narine, on Wednesday, said that the request by the union and sugar workers was not unreasonable since public servants and other workers are receiving far greater sums of money from the government.  He said that if these wages were to be taxed, the earnings of the sugar workers would be significantly reduced.

Following the recent ruling by the Sugar Tribunal to award sugar workers a retroactive three percent wage increase for the year, GuySuCo had announced last week that they were making efforts to ensure that sugar workers received this payment before Christmas. The tribunal panel had given GuySuCo up to March 2010 to pay workers this increase.

Meanwhile, Narine told Stabroek News that no tangible progress was made at Wednesday’s meeting which was held to negotiate the award of this year’s Annual Production Incentive (API) to workers. According to the General Secretary at the meeting the Sugar Corporation repeated its offer of an API of 4 work days’ pay. In response, GAWU asked the Corporation to reconsider this offer which they promised to do.

The union has requested a nine-day pay incentive based on the achievement of a production target of 228,000 tonnes of sugar. Should the production target reach 235,000 tonnes, the workers should be entitled to an incentive of 10 days pay, Narine told this newspaper on a previous occasion.