“It would be a mistake for government to assume that respect for workers’ rights can be traded for foreign investment since that assumption is probably likely to leave us worse off as a society than if we have no foreign investment at all,” General Secretary of the Guyana Trades Union Congress (GTUC) Lincoln Lewis has told the Stabroek Business.
On Wednesday, in the second of two successive interviews with this newspaper, Lewis said that evidence of transgression of workers’ rights “and in some instances disregard for environmental protocols had surfaced at workplaces… of foreign-controlled companies. I don’t think there is any doubt that there is no correlation between the body of evidence that exists to this effect and the effort being made by government to ensure that workers’ rights and the laws of the land are respected.”
The GTUC General Secretary said he had “particularly good reason to point to the Rusal majority-owned bauxite-mining company, Bauxite Company of Guyana Inc (BCGI)…. I have a particular concern with BCGI. I have said in a previous interview that they