General Secretary of the Guyana Trades Union Congress (GTUC), Lincoln Lewis, has told Stabroek Business that both the government and the labour movement need to pay particular attention to matters relating to safety and health and workers’ rights against the backdrop of the anticipated major overseas investments in the mining sector.
“Gold and manganese particularly appear to have attracted major investments and one assumes that these new operations will offer employment to sizeable numbers of people. I believe that should be attended by arrangements to ensure that the operations of these companies should be attended by special attention to the rights of the workers who will be employed. The companies should be made fully aware of what the laws are and there should be an oversight mechanism to ensure compliance with those laws,” Lewis said.
“A lot is being said about major multi-million dollar investments in gold and manganese but up until now rather less has been said so far about ensuring that issues to do with conditions of work including safety and health are dealt with as part of the process,” Lewis said.
The GTUC General Secretary who is also General Secretary of the Guyana Bauxite and General Workers Union (GB&GWU) told Stabroek Business that while he recognized that labour had a responsibility “to raise the issue of the protection of workers’ rights,” he believed it was desirable for the government to send clear signals that it wanted to ensure that foreign investors were aware of the importance of protecting workers’ interests. Asked whether he considered it the desirable thing that workers who are employed by foreign mining investments are unionized, Lewis said that he considered it particularly important that workers in the mining sector have union of their choice.
Lewis’s comments come on the heels of a recent announcement by Natural Resources Minister Robert Persaud that Guyana can anticipate Canadian investments totalling more than US$180 million in the gold mining industry. Major financial commitments have also been made by the Reunion Manganese company for investment in manganese mining in the Matthew’s Ridge area.
“I believe that these major external private sector investments in the mining sector which will necessitate the recruitment of significant numbers of workers provide important opportunities for the country’s economy. Unfortunately, the history of expatriate mining operations elsewhere suggests that these operations often do not take account of the welfare of workers. There are cases in which there has been loss of life on account of indifference to health and safety rules and other cases in which workers have been unfairly treated,” Lewis said.
According to Lewis, the anticipated increase in the scale and method of gold-mining operations and the additional safety and health implications for those operations raises new challenges for investors, workers, trade unions and the country as a whole. “What the newness of some of these operations mean is that both the labour movement and the government will have to become familiar with the health and safety implications,” he said.
What this may mean is that the government in collaboration with the investors and the labour movement “might have to seek to secure health and safety guidance from outside Guyana that takes account of the new challenges associated with the large-scale mining that will now be taking place,” he added.
And in a veiled reference to the GB&GWU’s long-standing differences with the majority Russian-owned Bauxite Company of Guyana Ltd, Lewis told Stabroek Business that he had felt it necessary to make public his concern about the need to protect the rights of workers in the mining sector “given the fact that we have had and continue to have difficulties with foreign investors in the mining sector who have been known to show disregard for the country’s labour laws.”
