General Secretary of the Guyana Bauxite and General Workers’ Union (GB&GWU) Lincoln Lewis says that his meeting last week with two visiting officials from United Company RUSAL, which has an 80 per cent stake in the operations of the Bauxite Company of Guyana Inc (BCGI) was a “hopeful sign” that the protracted tempestuous relationship between the company’s workers and the Russian management may have entered an environment where a better rapport may be possible.
“The meeting was cordial. I cannot go any further. There was a discussion and there is an understanding on both sides that there are problems to be addressed and that addressing those problems is a process,” Lewis told Stabroek Business.
The GB&GWU has been the bargaining agent for the workers at the Berbice bauxite operations long prior to RUSAL’s acquisition of the majority stake in the entity. However, the advent of Russian top management has witnessed a seemingly intractable official opposition to worker unionization. Not only is the union unable to officially engage its workers at the BCGI worksite, but the workers themselves have accused the BCGI management of a creating a physically and emotionally hostile work environment with controversy arising over, among other things, issues of health and safety and their treatment by the Russian managers.
For its part the GB&GWU has accused the previous political administration – and to a lesser extent the current one – of ignoring the plight of the BCGI workers and neglecting to compel the Russian management to comply with the laws of Guyana by allowing the workers to enjoy membership of a trade union of their choice. In recent weeks the BCGI management had disclosed that it was seeking to create a new workers’ mechanism to serve as a point of contact between workers and management, a disclosure which Lewis described as “farcical,” and “a further indication of the intention of the Russian management at BCGI to strangle workers’ rights.”
On Saturday, Lewis said that his invitation to attend a meeting with the two visiting RUSAL officials had taken him by surprise since he had had no prior warning that they had been expected in Guyana. “My best guess is that the visit by the RUSAL officials arose out of some contact that had been made by the Government of Guyana and that it may have been the result of the crisis that had arisen here,” he said.
While welcoming the visit, as well as his own meeting with the officials, Lewis said he was still “disappointed” that the Ministry of Social Protection had declined to send “more assertive signals” to the Russian management at BCGI regarding the concerns that had arisen out of the frequent complaints of both the workers and the union. “The truth of the matter is that both as a shareholder in BCGI and as the custodians of the state, government had a responsibility to intervene long ago since there was no doubting the evidence that there were serious problems at the work site,” he added.
Lewis, nonetheless, was prepared to say that the visit here by the RUSAL officials was “a step in the right direction.”
And according to Lewis, while his meeting with the visiting officials was yet to realize and “concrete understandings” there was now “an expectation that there would be some forward movement, hopefully in the direction of restoring their union to the workers. The GB&GWU’s priority at this time is to continue to encourage its members at BCGI to keep the faith and to make itself available for such discourses as might arise and might lead in a positive direction.”
