Workers of the Blairmont Estate who took strike actions to ensure that GuySuCo continues to pay them based on “bed-top assessment” were back on the job from yesterday.
The workers told Stabroek News that the decision to “call off the strike” was made following a meeting with them and leaders of GuySuCo and the Guyana Agricultural & General Workers’ Union (GAWU).
Mahendra Persaud, a representative for the harvesting gang with GAWU said they were not pleased that GuySuCo wanted to implement a system of taking the cane to the factory and weighing it there and doing the assessment.
At the meeting which lasted for about two hours, it was agreed that the estate would continue to carry out ‘bed-top’ assessments, much to the satisfaction of the 400 striking workers.
The workers also met with Minister of Agriculture, Leslie Ramsammy on Wednesday afternoon at the Regional Office and he had promised to “resolve the matter.”
They had downed tools for almost two weeks claiming that management had failed to keep its promise to continue with the “custom and practice” which it was doing for over 30 years. The workers had converged at GuySuCo’s pay office at Bath Settlement, West Coast Berbice from around 6 am on Wednesday and insisted that they would not return to work until their demands were met.
Persaud had said that, “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.”
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…”
