Dear Editor,
As I browsed your columnist Henry Jeffrey’s article ‘Unwillingness to negotiate is a fatal flaw‘ (April 25)” my eyes caught the line, “The Sugar Industry Labour Welfare Fund (SILWF), created in 1947 to provide subsidized services for sugar workers, survived the Burnham regime and is still very much alive. In 2010 it had assets of over $1-8 billion and received some $125 millions in levies from GuySuCo.“
As I read those words, I was expecting to read something in that article of a similar nature that was happening in the bauxite industry, but recognised that the author’s focus was on the politics being played out. There can be no denial that if compared objectively, sugar and bauxite workers were treated equally by the founder leaders of this country. I will list three areas to support my argument:
* In the sugar industry, there is the SILWF which will survive as long as sugar is exported. The bauxite industry had a thrift and pension plan; these funds and plan were designed to take care of the workers‘ welfare after retirement.
* GuySuCo still maintained it apprenticeship scheme; the bauxite industry had an apprenticeship scheme. Both industries used these schemes to take care of the future skills needs of the industries. The quality of both of these apprenticeship schemes was on par.
* The benefit of tax free overtime was extended to the sugar industry after it was introduced in the bauxite industry. The objective was to give the workers of both industries more take-home money without increasing their pay.
In reflecting on the history of the bauxite and sugar industries, one is forced to conclude that the country’s leaders at that time cared about the welfare of the past, future and present workforce and the industry itself. As a young employee of Bermine in the 1980s and ’90s, I can recall some of the decisions taken to make workers feel a little comfortable and to assist their children to acquire a better education. The most significant of these decision to me were:
* Tax-free overtime – workers were a little comfortable as they only paid tax on 40 hours.
* The children of employees attending school out of Kwakwani were given a stipend and those attending university were given performance sponsorship for the tuition fee. Employees who successfully completed any course to improve their qualification were given a full refund of the cost of the course.
Many persons may not be aware of the above decisions, but they all took place when Bermine was struggling to survive under the leadership of Chief Executive Officer John Lewis. Maybe he was aware that bauxite workers needed the additional qualification to move on.
Editor, the way politics is playing out in this country, and in the light of the conditions of the workforce in these two major industries, I can only place them in the context of the words of the song by Bob Marley: “Through political strategy, they keep us hungry, but when we got get some food, our brother got to be our enemy, we are ambushed in the night.”
Yours faithfully,
Jocelyn Morian