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