Even as Russian bauxite company, RUSAL appears to have struck a posture consistent with its recent signal that it may be pulling out of the contractual arrangement with the Government of Guyana through what has been reported as their recent strategic shifting of equipment, General Secretary of the Guyana Trades Union Congress (GTUC) Lincoln Lewis has told Stabroek Business that he is “still not as convinced as RUSAL wants us to believe” that their departure is imminent.
“Certainly, bauxite mining operations are still going on and the RUSAL managers still appear very much engaged in wages discussions even though they remain bent on getting their own way,” Lewis said.
Since February this year, following a decade of being ‘outlawed’ by RUSAL as the workers’ representative, the Guyana Bauxite & General Workers Union (GB&GWU), of which Lewis is also General Secretary, has been meeting with the company on a range of issues including the termination of the services of some workers and wages and salaries negotiations. These meetings follow the signing of a memorandum of understanding between the two following the intervention of the Department of Labour. There has, however, been little if any progress on the wages question. Lewis told Stabroek Business that currently and consistent with what he termed the company’s “anti-union stand,” no progress has been made in the talks.
“The company,” according to a briefing document seen by this newspaper, has “attempted to impose a 1% wages increase for 2019 after a 2% imposition for 2018 and 3% for 2017.” The document asserts that “as a result of the meagre increases imposed by the company over the years 2009-2018, wages at RUSAL have fallen dramatically below those at BOSAI (the gap is approximately 46%) and the union has been clamouring for parity of wages in the industry and for wages at RUSAL to be significantly increased to give effect to this.”
RUSAL’s negotiators, according to the document, have “rejected the concept of parity and this remains a major sticking point.” The company, the document says, has also rejected the union’s proposal that negotiations “deal immediately with increases for 2019 and 2020 and defer the discussions on 2009-2018 to a later date.”
Lewis says that he believes that the RUSAL experience is “one of those sad examples of how weak, underdeveloped countries possessing raw materials which they cannot afford to extract with their limited resources can be bled by “so-called foreign partners.’ According to Lewis a lot of this has to do with deals that are made under pressure by “weak governments that believe that they have no choice but to sign on. In the end we sometimes sign away chunks of our sovereignty to say nothing about the rights of our workers. Once the foreign partner senses that there are these weaknesses they have no hesitation in exploiting them,” he added.
And according to Lewis the track record of RUSAL in Guyana goes beyond whether or not, Guyana, as a country, is getting what it should out of the contract. “My experience and the experience of the workers has been that the outcomes of RUSAL’s sojourn here goes beyond whether or not it is a good business deal for the company. The Russian managers who have served here appear to have arrived with a mindset that borrows from President Trump’s well-publicised offensive description of some poor as ‘sh…ole’ countries. Actually, I believe that that is just the way in which RUSAL sees Guyana,” Lewis added.
Lewis told the Stabroek Business, meanwhile, that “whatever RUSAL’s intentions as far as staying or leaving are concerned, the company should not be allowed to leave without the Government of Guyana registering, through diplomatic channels, a strong and persuasive protest over the manner in which the company has sought to trample on our sovereignty and on the dignity of the people of this country. A government owes that to its people,” he added.
