At the end of a two-day strike yesterday at GuySuCo’s Plantation Diamond, the corporation said that severance pay for those workers “is not an option”.
While GuySuCo (Guyana Sugar Corporation) stated that it is deeply concerned about the strike by more than 400 sugar workers it contended that this action is a “deliberate attempt to mislead the public”.
The retirement of the Diamond lands, GuySuCo explained in a release yesterday, is a part of a programme to merge and modernize its East Demerara Estates. The two factories (at Diamond and La Bonne Intention (LBI), East Coast Demerara) have been operating below their capacities, the corporation noted. GuySuCo also pointed out that the Diamond cultivation is part of the LBI estate.
Workers at Diamond, they said, are provided with a disturbance allowance by the corporation. This compensates them for time used for the extra travel to the LBI estate. It is in this context, GuySuCo said, that the corporation finds it difficult to understand the approach of some workers and GAWU (Guyana Agricultural and General Workers Union). “We are also working assiduously to ensure our workers are not made redundant; rather our plans will provide greater employment opportunities for them”, the statement further said.
However, GAWU representative Shiv Narine told Stabroek News via telephone yesterday afternoon that a meeting had been set up with GuySuCo for next Thursday. “We’ll be meeting them at their Ogle office to discuss the issue of severance pay for the workers,” he said.
GAWU along with their sister union NAACIE had written to the corporation on March 23 requesting severance pay for the workers since they had to be relocated. It was GuySuCo’s failure to respond to this letter that sparked the strike. At about 5am on Tuesday more than 400 workers put down their tools in retaliation and gathered in front of the GuySuCo Field Office at Plantation Diamond.
Although the strike has ended, Narine stressed, the fight for the workers’ rights will not end. Responding to GuySuCo’s statement about the disturbance allowance Narine insisted that this incentive has nothing to do with a worker’s right to severance pay.
The disturbance allowance, he explained, is an agreement which was in place since he joined the corporation in the 1980s. It pays workers for two hours whenever they have the cause to leave Plantation Diamond to travel to LBI estate.
Some workers, he continued, would normally finish working in 5 to 6 hours at Plantation Diamond and can make their way home after. Working at LBI lengthens the amount of time they spend away from home. When a worker finishes working within the same time span they are sometimes forced to wait for hours on transportation. The estate truck will not leave unless it has 60 employees aboard.
“So the disturbance allowance which employees are given is not enough to compensate them for the time they waste on the worksite,” Narine said.
GuySuCo also said that of the total work force at Plantation Diamond only 10 live beyond Friendship on the East Bank of Demerara and 14 travel from across the Demerara River. However, Narine stated that there are also four workers who travel all the way from Soesdyke.
Narine is adamant that their job has become redundant and pointed out that the Termination of Employment and Severance Pay Act fully supports the workers. It is time for GuySuCo to pay up, he said.
Dealing with this point in the release, GuySuCo said it has absolutely no desire to make any worker redundant. If this is done then the LBI estate will be downsized and may even be forced to close. Reports that workers who travel to LBI are not provided with work are completely false, GuySuCo also said. Because of the current ‘El Nino’ phenomenon, the LBI estate does not have the ability to irrigate its fields; hence, any category of workers affected has been offered suitable alternative work.
GuySuCo said it has since written to GAWU to encourage its membership to support their initiatives to return the industry to profitability and secure the employment opportunities for workers.
