Union members present at the opening of the National Association of Agricultural, Commercial and Industrial Employee’s (NAACIE) Delegates conference yesterday, were urged to stand in solidarity, as they protest for the rights of workers, regardless of the union or industry being affected.
The conference, which began yesterday and will run until tomorrow, was held under the theme “Galvanizing solidarity to advance and protect workers’ rights”. The conference, which is also the union’s third Triennial Conference, was held at the Umana Yana.
Consultant Dr Nanda Kishore Gopaul, who delivered the event’s welcoming remarks, reminded the audience that unions must work unitedly to protect the interests of workers, and ensure that “if one worker is hurt, all must feel aggrieved.”
“The time for saying it is not our members that are suffering is long past. As Hubert Nathaniel Critchlow and our founding fathers would say, “you touch one, you touch all,” Gopaul, a former long-serving leader of NAACIE, stated.
Gopaul took the opportunity during his greetings to shed light on the plight of union workers. Particular emphasis was placed throughout the ceremony by various speakers in regard to the ongoing struggles being faced by sugar workers presently, with Gopaul noting that “untold hardships” are currently being faced by those living in the communities of Wales, Patentia, Vive La Force and nearby area on the West Bank Demerara.
“…only yesterday at the funeral of a colleague, an ex-sugar worker was telling me that comrade Gopaul, when you see poverty you don’t know until you see children walking out to school as early as 6 o clock, having to walk distances, can no longer take a short drop or a taxi or a mini bus, but they’re walking. And some of them walk with their bags empty hoping that some neighbour they will ask if they have some snack or something to give them,” Gopaul, a former PPP/C Labour Minister, recollected.
“Somebody in authority must go there and see the poverty, see the hardship, feel it and do something. You cannot close industries callously without thinking about communities and where they will eke out a new living—a living the next day,” he said.
Guyana Agricultural and General Workers’ Union leader Komal Chand spoke of yesterday’s protest by Rose Hall factory workers, the largest protest, he said, to date since the government’s announcement that several sugar factories will be closed.
“…since the closure of Wales Estate last year, and the threatened closure of the other two estates has been recently confirmed in the government’s state paper that was presented to the National Assembly last Monday; this morning, it was the largest protest by sugar workers against the closure of their estate at Rose Hall. All the factory workers, about 800 of them, joined by their spouses, by their children, and without police permission, they protested and marched for over two miles, and they promised to continue fighting until this negative decision is upturned, and with your support and with the people’s support, we believe we can do it. We can make the government listen to the workers and the people,” Chand asserted.
Delivering the feature address was Lincoln Lewis, General Secretary of the Guyana Trades Union Congress.
Lewis’ message, too, focused on solidarity among union members, as he advised that workers speak out against the denial of the rights of workers, whether they are directly affected or not, regardless of if it means challenging those in political leadership positions.
“It is obvious, and experience has taught us that every political party that is in opposition, when they enter government, turn on labour with an effort to destroy our strength and organizing effort when in government,” Lewis stated, adding that workers must remain constant and driven in their interests to make the lives and conditions of the working class better.
“No genuine trade unionist should make any apology when it comes to standing tall and committing to struggles to workers’ rights, which are human rights, even if it means coming up against our political comrades.”
“Silence by any union sends a signal that emboldens those who see trade unions as hindrance[s] in their quest for dominating the workers and trampling their rights…we must be proud in standing up as hindrance[s] to any who seek to divide, deprive, or deny us. As workers, we must galvanize in solidarity to protect, defend and advance the rights of our fellow workers, regardless of where they work, whether they are unionized or not, retired, working or looking for work…trade unionism does not discriminate but embraces the guiding principle that what affects one affects all,” Lincoln asserted.
Present at yesterday’s opening ceremony were representatives from the country’s union bodies, including the Guyana Public Service Union, Clerical and Commercial Workers Union and the Guyana Labour Union.
