The 135-day sugar industry strike 

The strike ultimatum

On Tuesday, 23 August 1977, the PPP-backed Guyana Agricultural and General Workers Union (GAWU), the union representing field workers on the sugar estates, called out its members on a strike after the state-owned Guyana Sugar Corporation (GUYSUCO) refused to agree on a demand for profit sharing to the workers for the years 1974, 1975 and 1976. The overwhelming majority of more than 21,000 field workers on all the sugar estates immediately heeded the call to strike. Within a few days, all production activity on the sugar estates, including the manufacture of sugar in the factories, came to a halt.

The issue had its origin in the imposition of the sugar levy in 1974 when the industry was owned by foreign companies. The union since then had insisted that the levy should have been applied only on income remaining to the sugar producers after the workers had received their share of the profits based on the collective agreement on profit-sharing.

This issue continued to boil after the sugar industry was nationalised, and GAWU continued to raise it during many meetings with the management of the state-owned GUYSUCO. However, the sugar company felt that the union did not have a case, and after a further rejection of its demands, GAWU on 20 August 1977, by letter, issued a 72-hour ultimatum for an impending strike. The union also served the strike ultimatum on Prime Minister Forbes Burnham.

In its ultimatum, GAWU stated that it was calling the strike because "the workers have not yet received profit-sharing for the years 1975 and 1976 and were short paid their profit share for 1974". The union quantified the benefit owed to sugar workers as G$215 million (US$85 million) and claimed this amount from GUYSUCO.

It advanced the argument that if the Parliament had not imposed an export levy on sugar in 1974 to deploy into the public revenues of Guyana part of the unusually high prices enjoyed by sugar on the world market in 1974 and 1975, the former foreign owners would have made "super profits" and, consequently there would have been a greater amount of benefits available to sugar workers by way of profit-sharing. The union pointed out that the sugar levy imposed by the government on the industry since 1974 skimmed off the high profits, putting the collection into the state coffers without any settlement of the workers' outstanding claims for their annual bonus payments.

It was apparent that the government was expecting a strike due to this situation and had plans to counter such action. At its congress in early August 1977, it had passed a resolution "that an Industrial Court be set up by government to revise the labour laws concerning workers and that penalties be devised for dealing with industrial malpractices, particularly those perpetrated by trade unions. In this context government should authorise the formation of another union in the sugar industry as a means of allowing sugar workers the opportunity of benefiting from a trade union along socialist lines."

The first reaction of the umbrella TUC, of which GAWU was the largest member, was to request the union to suspend its strike action for 24 hours to permit efforts at conciliation, but GAWU ignored this request since it felt that GUYSUCO had no desire at that time to negotiate the profit sharing issue.

The decision to strike apparently surprised both of GAWU's industrial allies such as the National Association of Agricultural, Commercial and Industrial Employees (NAACIE), the union representing office employees in the sugar industry, the University of Guyana Workers Union (UGWU) and the pro-worker Clerical and Commercial Workers Union (CCWU), since they were not fully consulted or alerted about the impending industrial action. The Working People's Alliance (WPA), regarded then as an ally of the PPP, was also taken by surprise. However, this faulty oversight was remedied as GAWU subsequently consulted and updated them on the strike activities on a regular basis.

Within the first few days, genuine efforts were made to end to the strike. NAACIE called a meeting of the three unions active in the industry - itself, the GAWU and the Guyana Headmen's Union (representing the sugar boilers and factory workers) - as well as the CCWU and the UGWU, and the meeting urged the TUC to intervene to end the strike "on the basis of a just settlement of the sugar workers' grievances."