GuySuCo’s Blairmont Sugar Estate workers, who are striking to protest new measures that are slashing their wages, yesterday said they will not return to work until their concerns are addressed; they have been on strike since Monday.
The workers from different sections participated in a ‘symbolic march’ yesterday and called for the removal of estate manager Corlette Victorine and field manager Anil Seepersaud.
They told Stabroek News that since Victorine took over late last year, they have been denied rights. According to the workers, although they have been protesting for better working conditions for almost one week and punts of cane in the canal have been spoiling while there has been no production, no one has adequately addressed their problems.
The workers lamented that the Victorine wants to “cut cost but yet he travels to work every day from Buxton” with GuySuCo’s vehicle, even though the estate provides a house at Blairmont for him to stay.
A Guyana Agriculture and General Workers Union (GAWU) representative, Rafi Yusuff, explained that each gang—cultivation, harvesting, factory, field workshop—has problems. However, only persons from some of the gangs were selected “to go to Georgetown to discuss [the issues] with the management and the union.” The union, he said, is claiming that only two gangs have problems.
The workers’ main grouse, Yusuff explained, is with cost-cutting measures that are “slashing our money. Now this [estate manager] wants to have production without cost; that is impossible and like he wants to make it possible,” he said.
Yusuff, a fireman, added that he “worked 31 years at the estate as a cane-harvester… and the things we are accustomed to this man wants to take it away….” He pointed out that the “fireman in our gang used to have one alternative [day] per week to weed the field as extra work but dem tek away that. Every other Sunday we used to have a standby to burn cane and dem tek that away too.”
A delegation from the Alliance for Change (AFC), including Chairman Khemraj Ramjattan, executives Moses Nagamootoo, Nigel Hughes and Gerhard Ramsaroop as well as columnist Frederick Kissoon met the workers yesterday.
Nagamootoo told this newspaper that the AFC was “here as a team because we were asked to come.” He said they listened to the grievances of the workers and were expected to “make representation wherever we can.” He also said that they “intend to raise these issues with the union [GAWU] and the management of GuySuCo. We want a solution to the problems that the workers are faced with.”
He pointed out that the AFC was not there to “knock the union down and we are not here to really blame anybody except that we know there is a problem and it should be resolved.” According to him, it seemed as though the union is in league with the management of the estate and it was “not doing anything for the workers right now.”
A worker from the side-line dam said they used to be paid $3,000 for the job but now that figure would be slashed. They also have to “weed between the raw, tall cane to remove obstacles in the hot sun without water.” GuySuCo, the worker explained, was supposed to provide a “water punt with a water-fetcher but now they tell you to make sure you full yuh water-bag and walk with it. But the agreement said only one pint of water you can take with you and when that finish they have to provide.”
Further, the workers said that they are no longer provided with pieces of rope with hooks attached to tie the punts and they have to purchase their own ropes and hooks.
The factory workers had told Stabroek News that the manager has implemented a system of keeping the gates locked at all times and that even when it is time for them to leave work to go home, they have to get a pass and “get the boss the sign it first.”
According to them, “That never happened in the history of this estate… why he [manager] wants to come and change it?”
Further, they asked for “…good sense to prevail.” They explained that there was an agreement since 2004 that when the workers go to the estate’s dispensary for medical check-ups they would not go in to work for the day.
The managers are “trying to abolish [this] which the workers fought for over the years,” a worker said.
They workers were concerned too that the estate invested millions of dollars in five tractors, which only worked for six weeks and broke down and have been parked for about a year. It was found, according to one of the workers, that the tractors have a “maker’s fault… but nobody is paying heed to it or coming to check them. When you buy new items they are on warranty… but the loosing up was done by Blairmont Estate mechanics. If they want production they should fix them up and give us to work but the estate said the parts didn’t come for them yet.”
