German-based Bauxite Com-pany Oldendorff Carriers (Guyana) Inc and the People’s United and General Workers Union are once again embroiled in a dispute over the rights, increased wages and improved working conditions of workers in the company.
General Secretary of the union Micah Williams said the company has been giving them the royal runaround; it’s been over a year and no collective labour agreement has been signed. “This company is delaying the process and they are not even respecting the labour laws in Guyana,” he told this newspaper.
When contacted, the general manager of Oldendorff said that he doesn’t have any comment on the issue at the moment.
Williams said the union has submitted a proposal to Oldendorff for negotiation but the company has employed deliberate acts not to engage in discussions to realise an agreement.
The union had received complaints from workers that the company had issued forms for them to sign acknowledging and accepting a salary increase of 3.3%, he said. He added that based on this information, the company was acting outside of normal procedure which can be seen as undermining the union. This is in breach of International Labour Organisation convention 98: Rights to Collective Bargaining and Article 23 (1) of the Trades Union Recognition Act which states, “where a trade union obtains a certificate of recognition for workers comprised in a bargaining unit in accordance with this part, the employer shall recognise the union, and the union and the employer shall bargain in good faith and enter into negotiations with each other for the purpose of collective bargaining, not forgetting the said (agreement) including wages and working conditions”.
Williams also said that last year the union after examining the deliberate tactics employed by the company, had taken a decision consistent with Article 6.3 to advise the company that it had five days to respond to the union so that the parties can commence the negotiations process of the Collective Labour Agreement. To date, Oldendorff has refused to meet the union.
Last year in a letter addressed to the union, the company stated that it fully rejected the allegations made by the union that it was in breach of the ILO convention. “At no point in time did the company negotiate wages directly with its employees.
While it is clearly the job of the union, the company, acting in good faith did not think that the employees should be penalised by the union’s slow approach to the negotiation process. Especially when the union refused to provide comments to the company’s counter proposal. Therefore, a salary increase of 3.3 per cent was afforded to the workers by the company,” the letter stated.
Lincoln Lewis, General Secretary of the Guyana Trade Union Congress in a telephone interview last Friday said this was a company that did not want a union.“They don’t want a union; they don’t want the GB&GWU, and they even went to the workers and said ‘we want to pay you substantial wage increases but the Guyana Bauxite and General Workers Union is standing in the way.”
The company had told the union that it was ready for the long haul, he said.
