For the past year, fired Aroaima bauxite worker Lennox Williams has been out of a full-time job and has been forced to “catch his hand here and there” to earn money to support his family of seven.

The past year has been a year of turmoil. “A year of pressure… I try hustling a dollar here and there. It has not been easy not working and having a wife and children,” he said.

Williams is one of the 57 employees dismissed last year by the Rusal subsidiary, the Bauxite Company of Guyana Inc (BCGI) after over 300 workers staged a strike for higher wages.  Since then he has found it hard to secure a permanent job even as he patiently waits for the Ministry of Labour to resolve the conflict between the Guyana Bauxite and General Workers Union (GB&GWU) and the company.

[media id=2]The dispute is still engaging Chief Labour Officer Yoganand Persaud who has been meeting occasionally with representatives from the union and the company to iron out the matter.  The company, in a letter to the union leaders last year, indicated that it had terminated the Collective Labour Agreement between the two entities entered into on 4 April, 2008. It also moved to derecognize the union as the bargaining unit for the workers.  There has been no resolution of these matters to date.

Formerly employed as a heavy equipment operator at Aroaima, Williams is nonplussed at the Labour Ministry’s failure to adjudicate in this matter and contrasted this with the ministry’s reaction when dealing with disputes in the sugar industry. According to him, the bauxite workers were in their right to strike and it is puzzling that the Ministry of Labour would allow the bauxite company to terminate the services of the workers in such circumstances.

However, while Williams is disillusioned with the apparent failure of the government to act in the best interest of workers, he still hopes that eventually the matter will be resolved amicably. Should this happen, Williams said, he is willing to resume working with the company but he wants to be paid his benefits and for the time he was away from work owing to what he said is his wrongful dismissal. “I would go back to work, but I believe that I should be paid for all the time off since I was wrongfully dismissed,” he said. Even if the company does not want to rehire him, he wants to be paid all the benefits owed to him.

In the meantime, he is trying his best to support his family but admits that a lot of strain is being borne by his wife, with assistance from his eldest daughter. He said his family has its fair share of expenditure among which is paying daily transportation costs for his son, who is attending St Rose’s High School in the city.

`I try to get jobs all over’

Another former employee Waye Coppin has found it difficult to secure a permanent job since being dismissed. He said everyplace he has applied to for a job has turned him down. “I try to get jobs all over,” he says. It is difficult for Coppin because he has a wife and 6 children to care for. When he was dismissed he says he received no severance pay, no bonus and no leave allowance.

He too believes that the dispute could be settled if Labour Minister Manzoor Nadir or even President Bharrat Jagdeo gets involved.  According to him, the rights of the workers were violated by the company who punished them for exercising their right to strike.
Representatives of the company have argued that during the wages negotiations with the company, the GB&GWU had agreed to one of three options presented and then reneged. This option was for a 10% retroactive pay hike and the retrenchment of 75 workers.

Efforts last week to contact senior officials of the company for an update on the industrial relations dispute were unsuccessful.

Monty Glasgow, another employee, who was dismissed by the company, said the option was just an excuse being used by the BCGI. Glasgow, who for several years was a leader within the GB&GWU, argued that the union never agreed to the 75 workers being retrenched.  Documents had however shown that union had agreed to the option. He said even if the union had agreed to workers being fired, this would have to follow a certain protocol, which would entail the last come, first go method; the most recent employees would be the first to be dismissed. He said the dismissal of the 57 workers was done in a clearly discriminatory manner.

He said he was aware of concerted efforts of the company to engage in union busting, in an attempt to have a Workers’ Committee take the place of the union. According to him, by belittling the efforts of the union and by promising increased wages, the company was able to get employees to resume working.  One representative of the company, he said, approached him about returning to work some months after he had been dismissed but he declined.

Glasgow, who had worked for 12½ years at Aroaima, had been employed for 2½ years with the BCGI as a Master Heavy Equipment Operator. Fortunately for him, he has been able to secure employment doing mining in the interior. He was grateful for this even as he acknowledged that several persons were not as fortunate.

Objection
Contacted for comment on the ongoing dispute, Persaud, who is also the Secretary of the Trade Union Recognition and Certification Board (TUR&CB) said while the board had ordered a poll to deal with the whole de-recognition matter, the union had objected to this.
He said that given this objection, the board was trying to reach an agreement with both the company and union. “The board just doesn’t go ahead and do things,” he said, “we want to get both parties to agree.”

When questioned about the issue of the survey results, Persaud said that this was something that the union had requested and the board will be talking to union representatives very shortly. He said that the GB&GWU continues to be the recognized bargaining unit of these bauxite workers.

Nadir did not respond to questions sent to him via email on the issue, but he has told this newspaper repeatedly in the past, that his ministry was doing all it could to bring a resolution to the matter. According to him, the ministry continued to encourage both parties to meet and iron out their differences.

General Secretary of the GB&GWU Lincoln Lewis said the main issue in this dispute is that the Ministry of Labour failed to carry out its legal mandate. According to him, it failed to conciliate in a dispute between the union and company regarding the establishment of a new Collective Labour Agreement (CLA).  He said that since the company wrote to say that it was terminating the CLA, which was ultra vires, the Ministry has failed to take any action to have normalcy return.

The workers, he said, are “living Martyrs of this labour movement”. He said that while the Trade Union Recognition and Certification Board (TUR&CB) has responded to the move by the company to derecognize the union by ordering that a poll be conducted, the union does not believe this is the way to go.  He said that while the TUR&CB says that a survey conducted with the employees indicates that a poll should be conducted, the union is yet to see the results despite their repeated requests.

Lewis said that while the union is confident that it will do well if a poll were conducted, it is concerned about the absence of a guarantee that the company’s management would adhere to the findings of the poll.    He said too that should the poll be held and the union gets the desired results, a new certificate of recognition will be issued which would prevent the matter of the 57 workers being settled.

Intensify

Meanwhile, Lewis said that the union is trying up its fight for justice. He said that they are trying to get the Parliamentary Opposition involved as they consider other options to intensify their struggle. “The workers… they don’t see it just as a bread and butter issue. People see it as a transgression of rights,” he said. “We’re not going soft on RUSAL. We’re in this for the long-haul,” he said. “This is about rights. We are on the right side. We are going to win,” he said. Lewis said that it is imperative that RUSAL be made to respect the rights of citizens and to fulfill the commitments they have made to the government of Guyana. He said Guyanese can’t allow a foreign company to abuse our natural resources because it creates a few jobs.

Meanwhile, President of the GB&GWU Leslie Gonsalves told the newspaper that the time has come for the Ministry of Labour to get decisively involved in the matter. He said that the workers were in the right and that no law was violated by the workers. He stressed that where there had been acts of illegality; it had been committed by the company.

Protest
In a statement to mark the one-year anniversary of the strike the GB&GWU said the workers, will mark the day with a protest in front of the Ministry of Labour.
It said that as of today the 57 workers have been denied income of approximately 65.5 million dollars and counting for every day they are away from their jobs.
“This economic marginalization not only impacts the workers but also their families, children and the communities within which they live.

Working conditions for workers continue to deteriorate at BCGI yet a government, who is constitutionally bound to serve and protect all the citizens, continues to ignore and even support the injustices and inequalities inflicted on the workers by a foreign management, in a company the people of Guyana has part ownership, operating on our soil and is bound to respect the country’s laws and industrial relations practices”, the union charged.
The union also took aim at the Ethnic Relations Commis-sion (ERC) accusing it of ignoring the workers’ calls for justice and equality. The ERC has denied this.

“Several correspondences were written to the ERC starting January 4 and a presentation made on January 8 seeking a public enquiry into this matter since the union, based on a preponderance of evidence, holds the view that the discrimination meted out to bauxite workers is based on race and political geography. With the exception of the ERC telling tall tales to the media and the Union having honoured the body’s request verifying that Mr. Carlton Sinclair is authorized to submit a compliant on its behalf, the ERC has done nothing, continuing to ignore the wellbeing of bauxite workers even as they spend the workers tax dollars to attend to other matter (s)”, the union argued.

The union also complained about what it saw as uneven treatment of the sugar and bauxite sectors.  “The GB&GWU, though not begrudging their counterparts in the sugar industry, takes note that the government acts with haste and leaves no stone unturned to address their concerns and engage their unions, GAWU and NAACIE. The rights to collective bargaining and freedom of association, engage in industrial action and respect for due process in the event of suspension/dismissal are respected in sugar and not for workers at BCGI”, the union charged.

GB&GWU added that it is strongly of  the view that the government refusal to enforce the labour laws to solve the dispute is “driven by race and political geography”.
“To date all the union has gotten from the minister is an acknowledgment of recognition even as he writes letters to the unions abroad, who expressed solidarity with the GB&GWU, denying his ministry is violating the rights of workers”, the GB&GWU said.

GB&GWU said it is aware of the fact that it has a “hard road to travel and a rough, rough way to go but remains committed to ensuring justice is served for every last worker. Our resolved is sealed!”

Timeline

November 22 – Over 300 workers downed their tools at the Kwakwani and Aroaima sites after the GB&GWU and the BCGI failed to reach a satisfactory agreement over discussions over wages.
The BCGI began to distribute suspension letters to some of the employees saying that they abandoned their workplace without reason.

November 25 – The workers intensified the protest by blocking the main access road to Aroaima and Kwakwani.  Three persons were arrested and later released.
The BCGI and GBWU failed to agree on the terms of resumption at a meeting officiated by the Chief Labour Officer Yoganand Persaud.

November 26 – Bauxite strike talks collapse as company fires some workers.  The union alleged that the company began issuing the letters of dismissal after agreeing in principle that the suspension letters previously given to the employees would be withdrawn.
Cabinet Secretary Dr Roger Luncheon called for continued negotiations between the company and the union for a solution that would be of benefit to the company. He said the administration sees the company as beneficial to workers and to Guyana in the long term.  According to him, RUSAL had been “deeply affected” by the global financial crisis.

December 2– The company terminated the Collective Labour Agreement and disclosed its intention to have the union “derecognized”.  The General Manager of the BCGI Sergey Kostyuk, in a letter to then President of the union Charles Sampson, said that the Collective Labour Agreement between the two entities entered into on 4th April 2008 was terminated with immediate effect.

December 29– Labour Minister Nadir states that the dispute between the GB&GWU and bauxite was different from the dispute between the Guyana Agricultural and General Workers union (GAWU) and GuySuCo, which his ministry had ordered compulsory arbitration for.  He said GuySuCo is the only player in the sugar sector which is a major earner of revenue for the country while, the BCGI was only one of the Bauxite companies operating here.  He said too that they had received 17 letters signed by 120 workers stating that they were dissatisfied with the union.  He said that evidence suggests that these signatures may have been gotten voluntarily since it was only 25 percent of the workers that had signed the document.

January 4 – The union wrote to the Ethnic Relations Commission (ERC) asking it “to commence a public inquiry into charges of discrimination” against Bauxite Company of Guyana Inc (BCGI) employees and the union.  It also wrote to Yoganand Persaud, in his capacity as the Secretary of the TUR&CB asking to meet with the board to discuss the company’s actions and public statements made by Minister Nadir. The minister, during a press briefing, had said signatures received from employees asking that the union be derecognized may have been gotten of free will based on prevailing evidence.  The union expressed concerns that Nadir made such statements in spite of the fact that he said the ministry had not investigated the matter as yet.

January 14 – Opposition Leader Robert Corbin announced that he had written to Labour Minister Manzoor Nadir over his failure to carry out his constitutional duty to intervene in the dispute between the company and the union.

February 10 – President Bharrat Jagdeo, while speaking at the Police Officer’s Conference at Eve Leary, said that in the context of harsh economic realities, the government had urged the Guyana Bauxite and General Workers Union (GB&GWU) to be cautious in their dealings in the bauxite sector.

April 16 – The Guyana Agricultural and General Workers union (GAWU), a union traditionally aligned to the PPP/C administration, called on Labour Minister Manzoor Nadir to “shoulder his responsibilities” in the dispute between the GB&GWU and BCGI.

April 28 – Nadir defends handling of dispute dismissing criticism from GAWU and other entities that he had not been acting in the workers’ interest.
June 3- The National Assembly vetoed a no confidence motion against Nadir regarding his performance in the impasse between the company and the union. The motion was moved by the PNCR-1G Shadow Labour Minister Basil Williams.
October 7 – A meeting scheduled with the union and the company failed to take place after the late arrival of the Chief Labour Officer. The representatives from the company left after Persaud failed to show for the agreed meeting time.