Employees in both the public and private sector workplaces in Guyana continue to be victims of inhospitable working conditions and have their rights as workers transgressed on account of flagrant disregard for constitutional provisions and rules that have been created to protect them,” Minister in the Ministry of Social Protection Simona Broomes has told the Stabroek Business.
Responding to questions posed by this newspaper regarding the impressions that she has gleaned from her ongoing visits to workplaces across the country, Broomes declared that there have been cases in which she has been appalled over the conditions under which some employees are required to work. “I can say without hesitation that there are clear cases in which workers’ rights are being trampled upon,” Broomes said.
And according to the Minister the transgressions of workers’ rights are, in some instances, reflected in the contracts that they have signed which, in some instances are not in keeping with either the principle of fairness nor with the law. “What is worrying is that the workers themselves often display a sense of helplessness that has to do with the feeling that by speaking out they could be affecting the welfare of their families,” Broomes said.
“The atrocious working conditions confronting workers in many institutions have to do with the hazards that they face when in dangerous situations they have to work with limited protective gear and cheap and inadequate equipment. Some employers seem not to care anything at all about their employees,” Broomes said.
“What is equally horrifying,” Broomes told Stabroek Business, “are those cases where workers, many of whom are hardly receiving a living wage, are short-changed by employers who are refusing to make payments for the lunch hour, fail to pay the correct overtime amounts and refuse to pay workers’ NIS contributions”.
Asked whether she felt that the problem lay with the ineffectiveness of trade unions, Broomes said that she felt that an environment had been allowed to fester in which some workplaces had become downright disrespectful to trade unions. “I was told by one General Manager that he had been advised by his Attorneys that his workplace did not have to embrace the union. Personally I think that is downright disrespectful,” the Minister said.
Asked about the situation in state workplaces Broomes said that sometimes it seems as though government ministries and other state workplaces are not accountable to their own laws.
Broomes, who told Stabroek Business that she fully intended to continue to visit workplaces across the country to assess the situation on the ground said that some of the worst hazards apply in the bauxite, gold mining, forestry and manufacturing sectors.
The Minister said that her assessment of the conditions that obtain in some of the workplaces so far had deepened her conviction that there was need for her Ministry to create a human resource base by undertaking specialist training in order to respond to the workplace challenges. She said that she believed that it was necessary to delink the Industrial Relations training curriculum from training in Occupational Safety and Health since while both of them had to do with workers’ interests they were distinct and specialized fields with each having its own area of importance. She said that she was pleased to learn that government had taken a decision to restore the subvention to the Critchlow Labour College since, among other things, it allowed for the Diploma in Industrial Relations programme to be restored to the institution.
