Former Agriculture Minister Dr Leslie Ramsammy says he stands in complete solidarity with his sisters and brothers in the sugar industry. They deserve a pay increase and they deserve it now he pronounced and continued: To withhold their increases and to threaten them with a “dreadful” Christmas are the most unholy unkindness that any government can impose on workers in any country. Unfortunately, APNU/AFC will not listen. They, therefore, must feel. Sugar workers must and will stand up for their rights, no matter which government is in place. Sugar workers of Guyana will go on strike sooner than later, unless APNU/AFC wakes up from its dictatorial idiocy. The sugar workers will strike to protect their dignity and their fundamental right to negotiate their wages with their employer, GuySuCo. Exercising their option to strike will be standing up fo

Former Agriculture Minister, Dr Leslie Ramsammy

r their right and has nothing to do with which political party they support. If politics is part of this strike, it is clear that APNU/AFC is making this matter a part of its own political struggle with the PPP. I remind APNU/AFC that the powerful dictators that they seek to emulate, the People’s National Congress (PNC) of 1964 to 1992 once sought to quiet the sugar workers. They failed then and APNU/AFC will fail today. I remind them too that the sugar workers took strike action almost daily with the PPP/C in government. The militancy of the sugar workers cannot be silenced now, just as they could not be silenced by the frightening British military in 1948 when sugar workers set Guyana on the road to independence. It is utterly disgraceful the way APNU/AFC is treating sugar workers. It is even more disgraceful that those who for several years chastised the PPP/C for giving sugar workers only meagre wage increases and those who swore on their own mothers that they will give sugar workers 20 per cent increase are dead silent. Not only are people like Nagamootoo, Ramjattan, Charandass, Ramaya and others silent, they are part of the APNU/AFC machinery that today is brutally abrogating the rights of workers for wage negotiation. The sugar workers have been lied to and betrayed, not only by APNU+AFC, but by people like Nagamootoo who used to brag of his sugar-workers connection. Some of the sugar workers fell for the promise by APNU/AFC of 20 per cent increase, compared to the usual 3 to 6 per cent that they were guaranteed under the PPP/C, no matter what the financial and production woes of GuySuCo was. How is it possible that sugar workers received between 2010 and 2014 pay increases of 4 to 6 per cent annually when production fell dramatically for various reasons and GuySuCo’s financial struggles necessitated subsidies from the PPP/C government and today are being told to settle for zero increases after the best production year since 2010? The simple answer is that the PPP/C cared for sugar workers and valued their dedication and contribution to the economy of our country. APNU/AFC simply dose not care for sugar workers, and have betrayed them. The PPP’s consistent and guaranteed 3 to 6 per cent increases were dubbed by APNU/AFC as miserly and meagre. Today, the sugar workers are being told to stay quiet, thank God they have a job and settle for zero pay increase. They are told that they must not insist on any negotiation, and if they do APNU/AFC will consider their action as political. To tell workers to bear their chafe and wait until APNU/AFC could find time to discuss the COI Report is insulting to sugar workers and all Guyanese. The sugar industry is too important for us to treat with such disdain, but Minister Trotman has no shame in telling them to stay quiet and wait until APNU/AFC can set aside a date to discuss their grievance. The sugar workers have been told that there will not be the customary wage increase negotiation until APNU/AFC tells them. It is November already and 2015 is almost over. The fundamental right of all workers is to strike when their rights are infringed upon. Clearly, the right of the workers to negotiate with their employer has been severely and maliciously infringed. The CEO of GuySuCo has the audacity and shamelessness to tell workers and their unions that there will be no negotiation until the government tells GuySuCo when such negotiations can take place. But the wage negotiations are not up to the government or the CEO of GuySuCo. These negotiations are part of the industrial legal framework for labour relations in the sugar industry. In the most difficult production and financial years for GuySuCo, these negotiations took place. The PPP/C government was well aware of the financial difficulties of GuySuCo but always supported GuySuCo in meeting its obligations to workers. APNU/AFC are in full control of the government now and they have their hands on the almost $US1 billion ($G200 billion) in reserve. They are expending Guyana’s hard-earned reserve to travel around the world in style, give themselves unbelievable pay increases, reward their friends and families with contracts and jobs and always planning big fetes, but they have no time to devote to the real work of governing. They told sugar workers they will deal with the workers’ wages after the Commission of Inquiry (COI) have submitted its report in September. The COI was one month late and then GuySuCo informed sugar workers that they have to wait again. Now after expending some $75 million on the COI (let APNU/AFC tell me that I am wrong about this figure and publish the latest expenditures for the COI), APNU/AFC tells sugar workers that the report is merely a preliminary one. When will this very expensive report be completed? It is an insult to sugar workers that the COI is now being used as an excuse to trample on the rights of workers. It is useless to remind APNU/AFC that there is an ongoing Public Service COI, but workers were given a pay increase. It is even more useless to remind APNU/AFC that they had promised to reduce the salaries and benefits of the President and the Cabinet because the PPP/C Cabinet members were “fat cats” living “Cadillac lifestyles in a donkey cart economy”. It is shameless audacity on the part of APNU/AFC to take the most hefty pay increases in the world for the last decade and then turn to sugar workers and tell them to behave and wait until APNU/AFC is  ready to talk, given that 2015 is almost at an end. The sugar workers have every reason to go on strike and it has nothing to do with politics. The sugar workers going on strike is ensuring their fundamental rights are respected by a government that after only six months already is building its resume of dictatorship. The sugar workers will expose the hypocrisy of APNU+AFC.