With its annual wages and salary negotiations underway, the Guyana Agricultural and General Workers Union (GAWU) is seeking an across-the-board 16% hike for sugar workers.
GAWU’s General Secretary Aslim Singh recently told Stabroek News that they are in preliminary discussion with the executive management of Guyana Sugar Corporation (GuySuCo).
Currently, the negotiating parties are reviewing the financials of the corporation to determine whether or not GuySuCo is in a position to grant the proposed increase.
GuySuCo workers last year received a 7% wages and salary increase like public servants.
Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo, while making the announcement, had said “…..In April (2021) when I met with the sugar workers who were terminated I indicated that apart from that $250,000 grant…there would be a salary increase for the sugar workers this year. And, I promised at that time that whatever the public servants got the sugar workers would also get. And so we have decided that the 7% increase would also be awarded to the sugar workers.”
The decision was taken during a meeting with Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Guyana Sugar Corporation Incorporated (GuySuCo) Sasenarine Singh, Minister of Agri-culture Zulfikar Mustapha and representatives of the Guyana Agricultural and General Workers Union (GAWU) last December.
Reacting to the increase back then the union had said “For the GAWU, the decision by the Govern-ment to provide workers with a seven (7) percent rise in pay equivalent to their counterparts in other sectors of the State marks a reversal of the policy of discrimination that was meted out to them during the Coalition Govern-ment.”
Under the previous administration, thousands of sugar workers were placed on the breadline following the closure of the Wales, Skeldon, Rose Hall and East Demerara estates.
According to the statement, the wages and salaries of the sugar workers were “frozen” by the previous administration while other employees in the public sector benefitted from increases.
“During that period, they suffered immensely as the cost-of-living rose appreciably while their real wages tumbled. In computations, GAWU pointed out between 2015 and 2019, sugar workers’ real wages declined by some 42%,” the statement highlighted.
