A scheduled meeting between the Guyana Bauxite and General Workers Union (GB&GWU) and the Bauxite Company of Guyana Inc (BCGI) with the Labour Ministry yesterday failed to materialize after the Chief Labour Officer failed to show, the union says.
A release from the union said that “the meeting between the BCGI and GB&GWU was planned several weeks ago” and was supposed to take place at 1 pm at the Labour Ministry.
When the parties turned up, the release said, the Chief Labour Officer Yoganand Persaud was a no show. “After waiting for 20 minutes of which neither party was told anything about the CLO’s absence, BCGI left the ministry,” the release said.
The union said that subsequent contact with the office of the CLO revealed that Persaud was in a meeting with the Guyana Agricultural and General Workers Union (GAWU). Efforts by Stabroek News to obtain a comment from the Labour Ministry were unsuccessful.
The meeting, according to the union, was scheduled to address the prolonged impasse between the two companies, following a wage dispute in November at Aroaima, during which workers engaged in industrial action. However several of the workers aborted the strike and resumed working, after which 57 workers were fired.
“If at this juncture the BCGI has turned up at the Ministry and the ministry failed to carry out its legal responsibility to conciliate in this matter it becomes harder for the public to believe that the continuation of this dispute is not motivated” by political and other factors, the release said.
The union said that on August 13, in a meeting with the Labour Ministry, it was once again given the assurance that the Collective Labour Agreement between itself and the company was respected” and of the ministry’s “commitment to see that justice is dispensed, and the Labour Laws of Guyana are respected.”
According to the BCGI, “the ministry’s failure…to attend a meeting that it scheduled and…its refusal to practice the basic courtesy of informing the parties as to the unavailability of the Chief Labour Officer, who was at a meeting with GAWU, confirms that the rights of bauxite workers are unimportant to this government.”
The union noted too that while 57 employees of the company have been put on the breadline for almost a year, the ministry took less than a month to investigate and reinstate four sugar workers. The union called on the CLO to explain the “preferential treatment” meted out to others.
“For the GB&GWU there will be no retreat, no surrender, until justice is served for every last worker,” the release said, adding that the Ministry of Labour and the Government should know that the union is committed to the long haul.
