Sanctioning a few ‘unruly’ sugar workers is fraught with unforeseeable reactions

Feb 10, 2010 Letters

Dear Editor,
Persons interested in industrial relations – an aspect of communication between employer and employee – would be concerned about the formulation of the report on “Unruly, ‘rum-drinking’ sugar workers” at Rose Hall Estate and the implications deriving there from (Kaieteur News, Sunday February 07, 2010).
The following perspective is purely from an organisational standpoint.
Based on the limited information published it would appear that the ‘forum’, so-called, could have been more creatively conceptualised.
The experience of most organisations, including particularly GuySuCo, is that a truly ‘constructive’ dialogue, as reportedly aimed for could only succeed within an environment carefully constructed to allow for a fair exchange of views.
This means that given the reservations on the one side, and the apprehensions of the other, the focus group must be small enough to exchange, and reflect on each others’ views. The scenario must, in brief, be one of real and unique people connection.
The obverse of such a scenario is of disparate selections of workers partially, if not totally, unknown to each other, some perhaps, for the first time, exposed to the larger group of discourse to which they were invited to participate, basically insecure when devoid of any explicit tutorship.
It is not unusual in the circumstances, for some to seek to hide their lack of self-confidence by cultivating a state of bravado (consuming alcohol is one example) particularly if they feel incompetent to articulate any strong feelings they may be harbouring.
From the published pictures, an absentee observer would first of all assume that there was some physical distance between the GuySuCo Management Team as represented, and their herded accommodation of workers – a situation that has been known to encourage spontaneous restiveness, once started by a single provocateur (deliberately or otherwise). It is the herd instinct that comes into play, and while some of the ‘unruly’ might have been inebriated, it does not conclusively follow that they all were.
Which raises the issue of ‘sanctions’ – in a strictly industrial relations context. Experience would have taught any practitioner that the burden of (alcoholic) proof would be a contentious matter. Many a supervisor or manager in GuySuCo, and indeed elsewhere, would attest to the necessary procedure for effecting discipline in this regard.
But that merely be-clouds the really fundamental issue: of the quality of communication between this Corporation and its employees, quite apart from that between the former and the Union.
In organisations it is not unreasonable to expect that the quality of relationship which exists at the operational levels can extend to the higher levels of authority, whenever opportunity is provided the supervised or managed.
So that the perceived irreverence to the highest management team cannot automatically in the extant situation be construed as either personal or deliberate.
Quite the contrary it behooves the decision-makers, at their respective levels, to analyse the motivators of the perceived (mis)behaviour.
In GuySuCo’s case the relatively turbulent industrial relations year of 2009; the frustration about the inadequacy or otherwise of a wage increase and related annual production incentive; fear of the impact of operational changes, like mechanisation; the ongoing symbolism of the Skeldon Factory (and its under-performance) as GuySuCo’s uncertain future; the contraction of medical services; the outsourcing of some operations; and the palpable deficiency of the human resources management function, can individually and severally be contributory factors.
The discourse therefore is not just with workers (including the ‘ruly’), it is also with their families, and their brothers and sisters who may hold various positions of responsibility in the very Corporation. It is also a message, however subliminal, to the surrounding communities.
All this means that the potential for ‘unruliness’ also lies in these communities across the industry. The suggestion of ‘sanctioning’ a few is therefore fraught with unforeseeable reactions.
One certain reaction however, must include the pause for self-analysis by all stakeholders, each to identify how ‘unruly’ one is perceived by the other. In the final analysis the option is not one of Sanction, but of Trust.
E. B. John

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Sanctioning a few ‘unruly’ sugar workers is fraught with unforeseeable reactions

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