Having served in various capacities, in some instances for more than 15 years, more than 40 Guyana Sugar Corporation (GuySuco) workers attached to the Demerara Sugar Terminal find themselves stuck in low-paying jobs and saddled with what their Shop Stewards say is grossly sub-standard trade union representation that is making no effort to engage the company in the matter of improving their wages and conditions of work.
When four of the group, Elvis Lamott, Prince Davis, Otis Glasgow and Mark Cameron visited the office they told Stabroek Business that they were speaking for a larger group of colleagues. They are fed up with their prevailing conditions of work, including absurdly inadequate pay and what one member of the group described as “forced membership” of a union, which they never agreed to become members of in the first place, “only interested in collecting union dues.”
Two attempts in recent months to hold a poll to arrive at a final determination as to whether or not the workers remain unionized with the Guyana Labour Union (GLU) have ended in frustration. The latest one is mired in the more complex national industrial relations conundrum that has, for the time being at least, seen the Trade Union Recognition Board (TURB) the body that must play a key role in taking the process forward, cease to function.
The workers accuse the GLU of holding them as members against their will and have sought audience with General Secretary of the Guyana Trades Union Congress (GTUC) Lincoln Lewis in an effort to find a way out of their dilemma.
GuySuco’s Chief Industrial Relations Manager Deodat Sukhoo told Stabroek Business in an invited comment recently that the Demerara Sugar Terminal workers ‘enjoy’ different conditions of work and pay from those of traditional GuySuco workers in the agricultural sector.
This newspaper has seen recent pay slips of several Demerara Sugar Terminal workers who have been employed for at least 25 years, but whose gross basic wages amount to less than $15,000 per week. Some employees with the same length of service have basic pay rates of just over $10,000 weekly. The issue of inadequate pay is linked, the workers say, to inadequate union representation.
The workers who spoke with the Stabroek Business say it is their wish to sign up as members of the Guyana Bauxite and General Workers Union (GB&GWU) of which Lewis is the General Secretary. Lewis told Stabroek Business that while he understands that the workers were in a tenuous situation he was mindful that the process of addressing their problem “adheres to the rules and procedures.”
The TURB’s inactivity for more than two months results from a move to the courts earlier this year by Chairman of the Federation of Independent Trade Unions of Guyana (FITUG) Carvil Duncan who is also the General Secretary of the GLU. Stabroek Business understands that the court has expressed the view that the parties should meet and seek to settle the differences.
Earlier this week Lewis told Stabroek Business that while the plight of the Demerara Sugar Terminal workers was deserving of more “aggressive attention” it had to be handled carefully. He said that while the workers say that they have no wish to be part of the union to which they currently belong, to attempt to decouple them from that union when the mechanism to address the question on unionization is not functioning at this time, would, in effect, leave them without any representation whatsoever.
