Dear Editor,
Referring to earning figures quoted by me in your story captioned ‘Parvatan, GuySuCo silent over disputed sugar workers pay figures’ in the January 5 edition of Stabroek News, it is reported that according to a source “… the figures [CoI] were reflective of wages and salaries including incentives and bonuses which may not be reflected in the pay slips that were presented by GAWU at the press conference.”
Please be assured that the figures quoted are inclusive of incentives and bonuses, meal allowances, and so on. I referred to cane cutters who earned $1.2m, $1.4m, $706,000, $830,000; fertilizer-hands $583,000; factory workers $1.2m and cane transport workers $1.8m last year.
Those numbers in the CoI Report are selected undoubtedly to convey the impression that sugar workers are very high earners and thus the public should understand the reason for denying them a wage rise.
The high earners, if indeed they exist, are merely a handful of 16,000 unionised workers. Some are engaged for many hours per day, like cane transport workers and others who are given more than one task each day.
The CoI report, in order not to mislead people, should have quoted the average earnings of each of the 20 odd categories of workers in the sugar industry.
Yours faithfully,
Seepaul Narine
General Secretary
GAWU