About a week ago, Labour Minister Dr Nanda Kishore Gopaul made an eye-catching comment in a section of the print media about what he described as “brazen disrespect for the country’s labour laws by some local and foreign companies.” Threatening “prosecutions… in cases where there were violations” and declaring that there would be “no letting up,” Dr Gopaul went to some lengths to make it appear as though his pronouncement was a precursor to the reading of a riot act.
There has been no groundswell of rejoinders to Dr Gapaul’s ‘proclamation’ from either the labour movement or from the workforce as a whole, no spontaneous urging that he press ahead with due haste to make good his promise; that is hardly surprising. His may have been the first official pronouncement of its kind since the Ramotar administration took office but we have, in the past, heard equally strident statements from his predecessor, Mr Manzoor Nadir; and since those prior undertakings have been attended by nothing remotely resembling resolute action to ‘take down’ flagrant transgressors of the country’s labour laws, Dr Gopaul would be well-advised not to anticipate that what he had to say will either bring a measure of comfort and assurance to the workforce or, for that matter, cause that delinquent employers to shake in their boots.
Employer indifference to the country’s labour laws and, by extension, to the welfare of workers never really seemed to be high on the agenda of the Jagdeo administration. A case in point has been its failure – despite several appeals by this newspaper – to find ways, outside of the cluttered court system to ensure that private employers remit to the National Insurance Scheme (NIS) the outstanding hundreds of millions of dollars in employee contributions, a posture that has emboldened transgressors to a point where the non-remittance of employee NIS contributions has become commonplace. The gravity of this particular form of delinquency is put into sharp focus when one considers that for many contributors, the benefits that accrue under the Scheme often turn out to be their sole form of savings.
Numbered among the victims of many of these transgressions are women, mostly security guards, whose complaints about employer abuse have had to do with extended shifts that sometimes last in excess of twenty-four consecutive hours, some of which goes uncompensated, and instances of sexual harassment and other forms of abuse. One recalls too the case, some time ago, of three security guards being severely beaten by their employers after which they were allegedly paid off on condition that the matter not be taken to the courts.
On the whole one gets the feeling that where the transgressors are either sufficiently well off and well connected, they enjoy immunity from penalty. The Ministry of Labour, it seems, is often inclined to go the route of brokering bilateral settlements between worker and employer – which settlements are often not to the satisfaction of the worker – particularly in cases where the circumstances of the aggrieved worker afford them no other feasible option.
There are other transgressions that have to do with summary dismissals of employees, discrepancies in wages and salaries payments, arbitrary ‘docking’ of employees’ pay and conditions of work that constitute serious safety and health hazards. On the matter of safety and health Dr Gopaul’s announcement regarding the revamping of the existing regime will secure little if any traction with either the unions or the workers since – by the admission of officials in the Labour Ministry – however many times you revamp the system the core problem reposes in the fact that there are far too few safety and health officers to ensure the effective enforcement of rules across the board.
To return to Dr Gopaul’s pronouncement, one notes, quizzically, that the manner in which the newspaper report on what he had to say was presented, causes it to appear as though he was not pointing fingers at any particular entity; it did seem, however, that he was hoping that his pronouncement would get the attention of the Russian managers of RUSAL, the company, which, along with the Government of Guyana, comprises the Bauxite Company of Guyana Inc (BCGI). Indeed, it appeared as though Dr Gopaul, albeit in a roundabout sort of way, was seeking to send a message to RUSAL that worker claims regarding its track record for violation of labour laws and worker abuse had become a matter of concern to his ministry. What was patently obvious, however, was that he was attempting to do so without appearing to be publicly castigating the company’s Russian management.
And why would Dr Gopaul be tiptoeing around the issue of RUSAL’s track record on the matter of respect of the country’s labour laws in which are enshrined workers’ rights? Why would he not simply look the company’s management in the eye and say to them that the rules and standards that apply to Guyanese employers of labour apply in equal measure to expatriate enterprises?
Since the commencement of its bauxite mining operations here the Russian management of the BCGI has been flexing its muscles in a manner that points to a decided lack of enthusiasm for orthodox industrial relations practices. Early in 2010 the company attracted the critical attention of the International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mines and General Workers Unions (ICEM) after it summarily dismissed fifty-seven striking workers and its announcement thereafter that it was de-recognizing the Guyana Bauxite and General Workers Union (GB&GWU), the bargaining agent for the sacked workers. In a statement on the issue ICEM not only accused BCGI of “coercing and intimidating miners to sign statements abandoning their union, a contradiction to Guyanese law and global freedom of association standards” but also alluded to “the deaf ear” of the Government of Guyana upon which the protests of the GB&GWU were falling.
One remembers too the incident last May in which one of RUSAL’s Russians managers reportedly threatened a local employee with physical violence, a matter which was only settled – and by no means to the satisfaction of the workers – with the arrival here of a team from RUSAL’s headquarters; this was after a protracted period of dithering and prevarication by Mr Nadir, during which he studiously avoided any utterance that might have appeared critical of RUSAL.
All of this raises the issue as to just how seriously we can or should take Dr Gopaul’s pronouncement. Our information from one of the two BCGI mine sites just a matter of days ago suggests that there has been no letup in the posture of the RUSAL managers in their flagrant disregard for workers’ rights. Accordingly, if he wishes to be taken seriously – and we assume that he does – Dr Gopaul would do well to commission an independent enquiry into BCGI’s industrial relations practices and act firmly on the outcomes of the enquiry. As it stands, that is, given the sustained worker complaints of transgression of their rights by the BGCI management and the government’s indifference to those complaints, the workers can hardly be blamed if they treat what Dr Gopaul had to say as though it were no more than a familiar blast of hot air. There is nothing that Dr Gopaul said last week that we had not heard before and his pronouncement would have done nothing to alter the view that the government remains indifferent to the flagrant flouting of the country’s labour laws by some private sector entities, including foreign ones.
BCGI’s brazen move in 2010 to de-recognize the GB&GWU was a function of its awareness of the labour movement’s considerable loss of both stature and influence in the industrial relations process. Indeed, based on information emanating from the Kwakwani mine site, orthodox application of Collective Labour Agreements appears to have been supplanted by management’s imposition of its own will, a practice that is driven by the Russian managers’ recognition that faced with the option of standing behind their union and keeping their job, many, perhaps most of the workers, are more likely than not to opt for the latter. More than that, the BCGI’s Russian managers are now only too well aware that their disregard for the country’s labour laws and for the interests of the company’s employees will not be met with strident and unequivocal official disapproval.
Dr Gopaul must also bear in mind that his stated intolerance of employer disregard for labour by some private sector employers must be applied equally to the public sector since the government’s own industrial relations record is nothing to write home about; that record includes instances of unfair dismissals, denying public officers promotion to which they are entitled (the case of retired Deputy Chief Education Officer Genevieve Whyte-Nedd comes to mind) setting aside wages negotiations procedures and imposing arbitrary wage increases (the government’s relationship with the Guyana Public Service Union comes to mind) and serious safety and health transgressions at some state workplaces.
The government not itself being a paragon of virtue in the matter of respect for workers’ rights, Dr Gopaul would be well-advised to put his own house in order, so to speak, even as he draws attention to the transgressions of the private sector. That is the only way that the glaring double standard that reposes in his recent pronouncement will go away.
We must wait to see whether, as he promises, Dr Gopaul is indeed prepared to lay down the law in the matter of employer respect for the country’s labour laws, or whether, as has been the case with his predecessor, when put to the test, his pronouncement collapses in a heap at the first hurdle.