Members of the Federation of Independent Trade Unions of Guyana (FITUG) affiliates participated in a “spirited” march on Thursday in Berbice as part of observances for the WFTU’s International Action Day to rally against inequalities.
According to a press release, FITUG affiliates the Guyana Agricultural and General Workers Union, the Guyana Labour Union, the Clerical and Commercial Workers Union and the National Association of Agricultural, Commercial and Industrial Employees marched through several streets in Berbice starting from the New Amsterdam Market Square and including Main, Philadelphia and St Ann’s streets.
The march was one of many “diverse actions” inspired by the large number of unions affiliated to the World Federation of Trades Union (WFTU) in more than 100 countries for its International Action Day observance. Other nations held strikes, demonstrations, protests and gatherings outside parliaments, factories and other workplaces, including buildings of multinational corporations.
This year’s observance was held under the theme ‘Food, Clean Water, Books, Medicines and Housing is a Right for All the Workers and The Peoples’ and a decision was taken to “rally forces against the big business interest, against monopolies which result in the working peoples of many countries dying from hunger; having to sleep in the streets; millions of pupils not having text books, sick people having no access to medicines.”
According to FITUG, the global situation is aggravated by the multinationals and monopolies that plunder the natural resources of countries. “They destroy the living standards of workers and exploit the poor farmers and self-employed people,” the group said. Further, the systemic crisis that has gripped the developed capitalist world since 2008 has pushed untold millions across the globe into the categories of the poor and the jobless; which, as the crisis continues, increases these numbers daily.
