PAY THE SUGAR WORKERS!
Sugar workers are being shortchanged, again. The public servants were paid an increase this year; the sugar workers have not yet been offered an increase. This is unfair to them.
It may be argued that the sugar company is losing money and therefore the workers are not entitled to any increase. Well, no one questioned whether the public servants, the police and the teachers deserved their increase. They were paid.
The sugar workers can claim an expectation to an increase. After all, it is not just this year that the sugar corporation has been losing money. It has been losing money for a very long time. Yet each year the sugar workers received an increase, not always at the same level with public servants, but an increase nonetheless. Why then deny them this year?
It may be said that the money cannot be found. Well, the government found the money to honour a multi-billion-dollar CCJ judgment. The government also found the money to pay public servants, police, soldiers and teachers an increase. So what happen to sugar workers… goat bite them?
Why deny them this year, when this is the year that production has actually increased. In fact not only has production increased, but the production at the Skeldon factory is actually increasing. It is not a certainty though, whether GuySuCo will be able to produce enough canes to satisfy the demand of that factory.
For this demand to be met, there is need for more sugar workers. Many had deserted estate work in order to go into better-paying occupations such as gold mining, construction and farming. If the workforce is going to be increased, there is a need to offer some incentives in the form of higher pay. This is all the more reason why the workers should be entitled to an increase.
The sugar company cannot refuse to negotiate with the sugar unions in the industry. To do so would be to return to the days when the sugar unions were ignored by those in charge of the industry. The government has not refused to negotiate with the public service unions, even though the increases for 2015 were paid without any negotiations with the unions concerned.
The sugar corporation cannot refuse to negotiate. It must negotiate. It can, during the negotiations, claim that it has no money to pay. It can justify its inability to pay on the basis of not having the cash-flow, in which case it will be for the unions to tell the corporation to go to ask the government for the money. The government cannot be refusing to advance monies to the corporation for salary increases to workers. How is it that the government is advancing monies to GuySuCo for debt, but cares so much about the workers that it will not do the same?
The sugar workers are reportedly being offered one day pay for every 85,000 tonnes of cane as the Annual Production Incentive. This has nothing to do with pay. It is a production incentive; something that the workers will look forward to tidy them over the Christmas holidays. It means that this year they have to cut double the amount of cane to receive the same money that they got last year. This cannot be right, but these are early days in the talks between the unions and the corporation, so perhaps this will be remedied.
Let it not be forgotten that for almost thirty years, sugar workers were deprived of billions of dollars in the form of profit-sharing, because of the massive sugar levy that was extracted from the sugar corporation to help pay public service workers. The argument then was that these public servants were also part of the economy and the earnings of sugar cannot be for sugar workers alone, but must be enjoyed by all.
So how come now the fortunes of the sugar industry are being separated from the fortunes of the public service. The sugar workers are also part of the economy of Guyana and if public servants can obtain an increase why not the sugar workers also?
