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Bauxite workers are not asking for handouts

Feb 20, 2010 Letters

Dear Editor,
The recent attacks on bauxite workers by President Bharrat Jagdeo and Mohamed Akeel, Labour Consultant to the Bauxite Company Guyana Inc., are unjustified. Bauxite workers have done nothing illegal to deserve the attacks and denial of work they are being subjected to. Throughout this struggle all workers have been asking for is justice and instead we continue to be met with injustice, after injustice and more injustice.
Four months ago, 57 workers, including the leaders of the Guyana Bauxite & General Workers Union were dismissed for striking. A right protected in the Guyana Constitution and Collective Labour Agreement.
Mohamed Akeel in his letter (SN Jan. 28, 2010) accused the workers of rioting and being a threat to company property to justify the company’s illegal actions. During the strike the workers were not on company property. We were protesting on the main road which is used by the public to get to the work site and the communities adjoining the plant. On the third day of the strike the company came on the picket line and delivered the dismissal letters.
The methods employed by bauxite workers to bring attention to their grievances are no different from that used by sugar workers in their recent strike actions. No one in the sugar industry was called rioter, had the army and riot police swoop down on them or lost their jobs. In fact, the Government moved with haste to address their grievances and caused GuySuCo to pay increase wages. Strangely enough the same Akeel who condemned bauxite workers also wrote a letter (KN Dec. 31, 2009) in support of the sugar workers.
President Jagdeo at the Police Officers’ Conference in speaking to the bauxite dispute accused some union leaders of “fleec[ing] on workers in these difficult times” (SN Feb 13, 2010). This is not true. The union leaders were fighting for the workers to get increased pay and to break the resolve of the workers the company dismissed their leaders.
As a former miner, Prime Minister Sam Hinds was written to by the dismissed miners on Jan. 8, 2010 seeking his intervention.
There has been no response. On Jan. 13, 2010, Labour Minister Manzoor Nadir was written to by the Union seeking his involvement consistent with the law. Other than an acknowledgement nothing has been forthcoming from his ministry. The Chief Labour Officer was also written to since December and there has been no response.
Bauxite workers are not asking for handouts. We go to work every day, working for 10 to 12 hours per day, under difficult and dangerous conditions, moving millions of tons of overburden and extracting millions of tons of bauxite. Some of us have even fallen sick working under unsafe conditions.
All we are asking for is justice. If the laws that are there to protect us are not being applied where else can we turn? And what are we being forced to resort to if our legal and constitutional means and rights are being denied us?
Carlton Sinclair
President Aroaima/Kwakwani Mines
GB&GWU

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