The Federation of Independent Trade Unions of Guyana (FITUG) says it is concerned that overt attempts are being made by the Alliance for Change (AFC) to undermine and discredit GAWU’s historic and current representation of the nation’s sugar workers.
According to FITUG, which includes the Guyana Agricultural and General Workers Union (GAWU), the AFC in hastening to offer support to sugar workers engaged in work-stoppages in several estates, has done so without having a full grasp of the issues involved.
A FITUG press release yesterday referred to the issue as “an unsettling development in Guyana’s industrial environment,” and contended that “the political party evidently feels that the time is ripe to mislead the country’s hardworking sugar workers with bad, unsound, non-industrial advice and in so doing is sowing confusion and encouraging division of the industry’s workforce.
“This sort of political intrusion can only pose further threats to trade unionism in Guyana, is clearly intended to fulfil a political agenda and, in the end, serve anti-working class objectives.”
FITUG also charged that in the sectors and at the locations the party “interfered with, the AFC leaders and activists stirred dissension within and between sections of the workforce and somehow even managed to complicate a few issues that workers were peeved over.”
Consequently, according to FITUG, that placed additional strains and demands on the union to address and resolve a number of issues, all of which emerged in recent months in the industry, but it was the union that played the pivotal role in successfully representing the workers.
However, FITUG acknowledged that there is an historic tradition in Guyana and elsewhere where politicians and trade unionists collaborate even to the extent of trade unionists entering the political arena and vice-versa.
FITUG pointed out also that although sugar workers could very well for various reasons seek relief and representation from politicians, the AFC’s motivation is seen as “stemming from political expediency especially as the AFC activists pay no attention to trade union structure and grievance procedures.
“Instead they incite and both subtly and overtly goad some GAWU members to think of some alternative union.”
The release said also that “GAWU has explained the various grievances raised and the swift representations it has given and settlements reached.
From addressing GuySuCo’s lapses with workers’ NIS records and benefits to issues of “days offered” per week and changes in the corporation’s “business rules” to making all Saturdays “premium days” et al, GAWU has pointed to its established structure which has proven workable up to now whereby the respective estates’ union shop stewards will first address complaints as they are trained to do before those unresolved ones are brought to the union’s executive for another stage of deliberations.
Against that background, FITUG declared that the “AFC’s modus operandi seemingly is to pounce upon an industrial issue, exploit the workers’ complaints and get instant media publicity without bothering to seek any comments from the sugar union.”
Meanwhile, FITUG noted that it can “understand the impatience of the aggrieved workers being influenced by irresponsible persons and buy into ploys of unsound and fanciful promises,” but at the same time it “frowns on those who resort to such tactics and techniques which could have negative consequences to trade unionism as a whole.”
FITUG also suggested that if the AFC is seeking to show concern for aggrieved and disgruntled workers, these can be found in several places and among many workers who are not even unionized.
