More than a month after a team from the Ministry of Social Protection toured the operations of the majority Russian-owned Bauxite Company of Guyana Inc (BCGI) in the Berbice River, a report from the ministry says the standards and value systems of the company in key areas of employer/employee relations including respect for workers’ rights and occupational safety and health are “unacceptable by any measure.”
This newspaper has seen sections of a report prepared by the ministry in the wake of a visit to the BCGI operations by a team headed by Minister in the Ministry of Social Protection Simona Broomes. Some 19 breaches were cited during an inspection by the team that included Assistant Chief Labour Occupational Safety and Health Officer Lydia Greene and Social Protection Ministry Consultant Francis Carryl.
Listed amongst the reported infractions being committed by BCGI is the alleged compulsoriness of overtime work, worker resistance to which could lead to disciplinary action, including dismissal. The report also cites the penalization of workers “whenever they are sick, even though they would have submitted medical certificates,” as an infraction of which the partially state-owned entity is believed to be guilty.
Cited by General Secretary of the Guyana Trades Union Congress (GTUC) Lincoln Lewis as the entity with “arguably one of the worst industrial relations records in the country,” BCGI, the ministry’s report says, has “no current safety and health policy in place.” The latest policy seen during the recent visit was dated 2012. Other related safety and health infractions listed in the report include the company’s failure to establish a Workplace Safety and Health Committee, the inadequate maintenance of first aid kits “in all areas of the workplace, high temperature levels in dormitories likely to give rise to heat and stress disorders,” and sub-standard hygienic conditions in lunch room areas.
In the report BCGI is also accused of failing to provide “adequate supplies of drinking water… throughout the entire plant.” It added that “in some instances workers have to walk some distance to access water and washroom facilities.”
Earlier this week, Lewis told Stabroek Business that he was “entirely unsurprised” at the findings of the report arising out of the ministry’s visit. “Nothing there surprises me. These are things which the union [the Guyana Bauxite & General Workers Union] had been speaking about for years. Had the visiting team stayed at the site longer, I have no doubt that they would have discovered even more infractions,” Lewis said.
According to the report, “The records of the Ministry of Social Protection reflect that the Guyana Bauxite and General Workers Union (GB&BWU) is both the recognized and certified trade union to represent the workers of Rusal [BCGI].”
BCGI workers, meanwhile, according to the report, are accusing the company of making them repay monies expended by the company on costs associated with the medical treatment in cases of industrial accidents.
“This must be one of the most shocking examples of heartless policies,” Lewis told Stabroek Business.
And according to the ministry’s report, “Workers expressed the overwhelming need for them to be unionized in order for proper representation to be made in negotiation of conditions of employment.” In its response to the workers’ demand for unionization the Ministry of Social Protection says in its report that it is its “considered view” that the conduct of BCGI “constitutes an infraction of the Trade Union Recognition Act Cap: 98:07.”
Commenting on this development, Lewis said that the marginalization of the union had been one of the strategies employed by the Russian management of BCGI, “To ensure that they got their own way” as far as the running of the company was concerned. “What we have found equally unacceptable is that over several years the Government of Guyana, a shareholder in BCGI, simply sat back and allowed workers to be abused and their rights to be trampled upon and never did anything to stop this,” the veteran trade unionist told this newspaper.
In its report the Social Protection Ministry recommends “that steps be taken to ensure that the relationship between the company and the union is normalized so that all outstanding issues” can be resolved.
