Over 400 workers of the Blairmont Sugar Estate have downed tools claiming that management has failed to keep its promise to continue to pay them based on “bed-top [field] assessment.”
Some of the workers who converged at GuySuCo’s pay office at Bath Settlement, West Coast Berbice from around 6 am yesterday insisted that they would not resume work until their demands are met.
Regional chairman, Bindrabhan Bisnauth met with the workers and they told him that they would like to see Minister of Agriculture, Leslie Ramsammy. The minister was expected to speak to the workers at the Regional Office at 4 pm yesterday.
Mahendra Persaud, a representative for the harvesting gang with the Guyana Agri-cultural & General Workers Union (GAWU) said Guy-SuCo now wants to “take the cane to the factory and weigh it” and do the assessment.
He said, “Management would normally do a visual observation, where they go in the field and do an assessment of the cane and average it and at the end of the negotiation they come up with a figure which the workers would be satisfied with.”
He said management was “doing custom and practice which is the bed-top assessment for over 30 years and we are demanding to have it that way again.”
According to him, the officials have changed to the new system from this crop because the cane is taking a longer time to grow.
He said “management created the problem for the cane not growing healthy and it is not fair for workers to pay for that. If they want take away the bed-top assessment they should grow proper cane in the fields.”
According to the workers, “management don’t manure the cane on time, they do not flood the field on time and they use brought-forward cane just to achieve sugar and they destroy the whole estate.”
Besides, they said, “the manure they used to throw on one field, they throwing same amount on five or six fields so the canes can’t grow…”
Meetings were held between the management of GuySuCo, the union and workers. What got the workers angry too was that last Wednesday, the field manager called the workers and representatives to a meeting.
He listened to their concerns and promised that they would go back to the “bed-top assessment” from that day. “Based on his words we called off the strike and went back to work on Thursday.”
On Friday they received the payment promised by the field manager but after he told them that the “bed-top assessment was just for that one day,” they decided to strike again.
In the meantime, the workers said they were asking management to give them the “four-hour pay or time-rated work when we go on strike.” As time-rated workers, they work 40 hours per week but if they go on a strike, they would be sent home without pay when they decide to return to work.
Workers contribute to the National Insurance Scheme (NIS) monthly without being questioned and are supposed to receive claims within 14 days.
However, when they send in claims for sickness benefits they would not receive payments from the NIS until after a few months. The excuse would be that the names
and other information were incorrect.
Meanwhile, a representative from the Alliance For Change, said leaders of the party, Khemraj Ramjattan and Moses Nagamootoo met with the workers on Saturday and they promised to “champion their cause…”
He said too that the workers assembled at Bath Settlement with the hope of speaking to President Donald Ramotar on Sunday while on his way to Babu John, but he did not stop to listen to their concerns.
