This week’s pronouncement by General Secretary of the Guyana Trades Union Congress (GTUC) Lincoln Lewis alluding to concerns that foreign companies involved in oil and gas-related pursuits in Guyana may not be particularly concerned about the protection of workers’ rights raises an issue that has not, up until now, been a central part of the national discourse on the emerging industry. As time passes, however, this can become an increasingly awkward issue in the realm of public discourse since, while the right of workers to unionization has long been embedded in the nation’s constitution, effective enforcement has failed to match the intention of the law.
There are those who might even argue that the right to unionization is of little more than decorative value since it is unlikely that any more than 10% of our work force is unionized anyway.
Effective enforcement of the prerogative of workers to become members of trade unions is a function, first, of the militancy of the workers, the presence of robust and enlightened trade unions and the preparedness on the state machinery, in this instance the Department of Labour to enforce the law. In each of these areas there are problems. Across the board our trade unions are weak and largely ineffective so that, understandably, at the level of the individual workplaces, where there is trade union representation, it is largely weak and ineffective. As for the Department of Labour, its track record on righting wrongs done to workers and supporting the principle of workers’ right to be affiliated to and function effectively at workplaces as members of those unions, is, as we say in Guyana, nothing to write home about.
Across the developing and underdeveloped world, Nigeria being one of the best known examples, oil and gas companies and their subsidiaries are known to be less than keen on unionization in the sector. Here in Guyana, the one relatively recent private sector comment on the issue of unionization in the oil and gas sector was made some months ago by the President of the George-town Chamber of Commerce and Industry (GCCI). When asked about the private sector’s attitude to unionization in the sector his response did not suggest that it was something that the private sector was ready to embrace wholeheartedly. On the whole and based on what has obtained over the years, the leading private sector entities in Guyana have demonstrated no appetite for unionized work forces and some of them have said so openly.
One of the most glaring examples, locally, of ill-treatment of workers and contempt for worker representation has occurred, over time, at a majority-owned company, namely the Bauxite Company of Guyana Inc. (BCGI) in which the Government of Guyana has a minority share. The overwhelming majority of the shares in the company are owned by the Russian company RUSAL. From all of the reports that we have heard the Russian management at RUSAL has no regard for the concept of a unionized work force and by the same token the Department of Labour has been decidedly leaden-footed in making the point to them about the constitutional right of Guyanese workers to trade union representation. Analysts have gone even further, positing that, fundamentally, the Russians who run RUSAL, by their posture, send a message of fundamental disregard for the sovereignty of Guyana itself.
Across the world, some of the world’s leading players in the oil and gas sector have not been known to be paragons of virtue insofar as the treatment of workers is concerned and it is not inconceivable of some of the growing number of big international service providers in the oil and gas sector. In Nigeria, issues have been raised regarding the disparity in access to training opportunities by Nigerian workers as against workers from First World Countries, the recruitment of foreign workers to do jobs that can be done by Nigerians, the problem of stagnant wages that often face Nigerian workers in the oil and gas sector and health and safety concerns that often go unattended to. There have even been reports in Nigeria of automation now being used to do jobs that had hitherto been done by humans.
If no one is suggesting that we begin by pre-judging or demonizing those companies from abroad that can apply the experience and the technology to execute critical services in or related to the oil and gas sector, the experience of other developing countries certainly suggests that we cannot begin our engagement with foreign companies from a perspective of innocence and altruism. More than that, in circumstances where the local private sector, preoccupied as it is with its Local Content pursuits, is itself unlikely to be seen to be ‘batting’ for the unionization of Guyanese workers in the oil and gas sector, it is left to the trade union movement, albeit a trade union movement that is substantively weak and largely unschooled in the ways of the global oil and gas industry, to take up the mantle of adequate representation for Guyanese workers in the oil and gas sector. If the jobs which the oil and gas sector can bring to Guyana will benefit the country, as much at a holistic level as at the level of individuals and families, that does not and cannot mean that as a nation we must simply “accept and bless” and leave the rest to chance. There usually are and in the instance of Guyana, will be, occasions in which the interests of employer and employee may not coincide and where there may arise, occasions for decision-making stemming from contemplation and discourse. Trade unions at the disposal of workers in the oil and gas industry in Guyana are, from our perspective, about the workers having a voice at the table. Mind you, if it is to be effective that voice, the trade union that is, must be as authoritative as it must be knowledgeable.
Lewis, the long-serving General Secretary of the Guyana Bauxite & General Workers Union (GB&GWU) and now seen as the elder statesman of the local trade union movement told Stabroek Business that one of his own personal concerns was that high unemployment in Guyana coupled with the hype associated with speculation regarding above-average salaries in the oil and gas sector could provide a temptation for oil and gas-related expatriate firms operating here to “casualize the labour market,” a circumstance which he said would result in ordinary workers not having the dreams that they have been associating with jobs in the oil and gas sector fulfilled. “We talk about the oil and gas sector opening up opportunities for Guyanese of all walks of life, but what we have seen so far is an aggressive push by the private sector in the area of Local Content while little or nothing is being said or done for that matter about creating opportunities that would realize the dreams of ordinary Guyanese whose only ambition is to secure jobs that pay fair wages and salaries to help them lift themselves life themselves out of poverty. There is something fundamentally wrong with that formula,” Lewis told Stabroek Business. If the extension of his argument has to do with the correctness of ensuring that ordinary workers who give service to the oil and gas industry are deserving of workplace support and representation in their pursuit of jobs that help them realize their dreams, which, frankly, are hardly excessively exalted ones, then it is difficult to fault his argument.
