Sugar Strife

Nov 01, 2009 Features / Columnists, Ravi Dev

---

The wage dispute between GAWU and GuySuCo has morphed into a country-wide strike involving the overwhelming majority of sugar workers – even as the Minister of Labour has imposed compulsory arbitration between the parties. The union claims that the strike, which violates the collective bargaining agreement of the industry, is a “wild cat” one – called by the workers themselves. But even if this is true – and with the present newfound truculence of the union, this is arguable – the strike vitiates the very raison d’etre for trade unions. If the union cannot influence its workers, then why should management bargain with it? They might as well deal with the workers directly.

But the strike and the remarkable statement of its “side” of the dispute by GAWU signals a seismic shift in the posture of the union. Long regarded as a “toothless poodle” by outsiders during the first seventeen years of the PPP administration, because its leadership was part and parcel of that administration, GAWU has evidently now decided to go on the attack. However, the gist of its complaints has to do with the incompetent management of Booker Tate, which has already been sacked. Booker Tate did not suddenly develop paralysis in the “last five years”. The complaints merely highlight the union’s long public quiescence about Booker Tate when the latter was in the saddle and which was seen as acquiescence by most.
The bottom line is that the industry has been brought to its knees, literally and figuratively, and the question is, “What are we going to do about it?” With the corporation bleeding red ink, is this the best time for the union to flex its muscles?

In trade unionism, as in gambling, in reference to the cards in one’s hand, one has to “know when to hold it and know when to fold it”. Along with the (admittedly long overdue) firing of Booker Tate, an interim board (headed by a long-time militant sugar trade union leader) has been established and tasked with coming up with a game-plan (which has been crafted) to turn around the fortunes of the industry. What is the union’s position on the Blueprint – especially on the role that workers will have to play to make it succeed? Does the union not believe that production on the Demerara plantations, for instance, will have to be rationalised?
The question is how to achieve that goal with the least harm to the workers – maybe even to their benefit.

Are the Diamond workers being compensated for waiting time? Are they being transported to LBI? With the expansion on Demerara Gold packaging at Enmore or the construction of an ethanol plan can they be given priority in the training for the new high skilled jobs that will come on stream? On the necessary expansion of cultivation on the East Coast to compensate for the lost Diamond acreage, rather than harping on “marginal lands” what about promoting the return of the private cane farmers (such as from behind Buxton, BV/Triumph etc.) on lands that have traditionally produced excellent yields. So what if most of their workers are non-unionised? The union wants what’s good for the industry, right?

It is important that the union takes a long-term view (at least within the Blueprint’s time frame) on its responsibilities towards its members: this is not served by killing the industry for a transitory short term gain. One can win the battle but lose the war. It was GAWU itself that noted, “The Corporation needs to invest in the workers and to sincerely take into account the workers’ role to keep the wheels of the industry turning profitably once there is adequate production arising from better productivity.” Surely GAWU is not claiming that the wheels of the sugar industry are “turning profitably” or “there is adequate production arising from better productivity”? So why the demand for a 10% wage increase – 7.7% above the projected rate of inflation for this year? Even if the industry were not on a life-support system, wage increases without productivity increases lead to all sorts of contradictions.

If the union is in agreement with the Blueprint, then its concerns ought to be that workers are not being taken for a ride by management by being forced to make sacrifices while the latter lives high off the hog. We had long suggested that the sugar union be brought into the Board of Directors of GuySuCo so that it would be totally au fait with the affairs of the corporation and also be in a position to influence policy decisions. It would have never been fair to ask workers to take burdens on which there was a severe asymmetry of information as to how those burdens were being shared – especially after suffering for twenty years under a management unit (Booker Tate) that was endemically anti-worker.

Dr Roger Luncheon has claimed that it has always been the policy of the government that the union be represented on the Board. GAWU vehemently denies this. We believe that even if GAWU is correct (Could it be that Booker Tate nixed the administration’s proposal?) they ought to snap up the offer with alacrity now that it has been so clearly and unambiguously articulated by the government’s chief spokesman. This can be the dawn of a new era in management-labour relations – one that, for instance, has worked with excellent results for decades in West Germany.

We would like to commend to the arbitrator (to be appointed), GAWU and the GuySuCo management team the proposal of an editorial in this newspaper. Let there be a 4% raise in the wages of the sugar workers that will take care of the whittling away from their pay-checks by inflation for this year. Management, which certainly has a lot to answer for in the present sorry state in the sugar industry, should volunteer a wage freeze for this year to demonstrate their commitment to the survival of that industry. Let workers and management both put their shoulders to the wheel to give the Blueprint a chance of succeeding. And if, perchance, the union feels the Blueprint ought to be modified, then its position of the Board will provide it with a platform to suggest appropriate innovations.

---

---