THE RECOGNITION OF GAWU IN THE SUGAR BELT WAS NO ACT OF GENEROSITY

Apr 14, 2010 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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Forbes Burnham was never generous with those whom he felt were opposed to him. He was ruthless.
He was ever ready to display his Machiavellian streak. Burnham never offered generosity to the Guyana Agricultural and General Workers Union (GAWU). Whatever gains that union and sugar workers achieved under the PNC were fought for tooth and nail.
Burnham did not also grant any legal status to GAWU. That union was established long before it was granted recognition as the bargaining agent for sugar workers, a right that it won after militant struggle culminating in a thirteen-week strike in 1975, after which the Burnham administration was forced to commence a poll in the industry and grant recognition to the union.
Recognition of GAWU was not act of generosity. It was a right which was struggled and sacrificed for since 1948.
But this was to be the last hurrah between Burnham and the sugar workers. They were punished for having struggled and won that right to be represented by the union of their choice and not to the lackeys of the PNC regime. The government eventually made the Trades Union Congress the representative organization responsible for negotiating wages in the public sector, and thus the sugar workers for many years saw the right to free collective bargaining abolished in the sugar industry and their future consigned to the then pro-PNC Trades Union Congress.
It was only after the 1989 strike, which involved the then members of FITUG, that GAWU won back the right to collective bargaining between themselves and the sugar company. That struggle took almost two decades.
Things have never come easy for the sugar workers. And indeed this is the message for all trade unions operating in Guyana. The struggle for just conditions of work involves militancy; it takes time but in the end victory is always assured where the workers are united with their union.
The strength of GAWU has been that it has always had the vast majority of the sugar workers behind it. The workers have a historical memory that it was GAWU that waged the struggle for recognition, better working conditions, and the right to collective bargaining, and thus despite the fact that they have in recent times suffered as a result of the rulings of arbitral tribunals (the establishment of the most recent tribunal to determine wages was in fact consented to by the union) workers have remained loyal to the union.
Therein lies the strength of trade unions. No matter how tough the going gets – and there are always enough incidents which allow frustrated workers to vent their anger at the representation they receive from their unions – it is critical that unions ensure that they have the support of their workers.
GAWU has managed to maintain that loyalty despite there being many grouses about the manner of representation.
And this is what makes it a strong union. Its strength is not the fact that it has been around for decades; its strength is not the quality of its leadership; it may draw strength from its numbers since it is the largest trade union in Guyana with thousands of members and has now expanded its reach outside of the sugar belt. These may add to the power of a union but in the end, the strength of a union depends on its capacity to retain the loyalty of its membership.
So long as the membership begins to drift away from a union.
So long as when this happens there are not enough new members to replace those who have left, then the union will become weak and is going to lose credibility.
There may be those who are disappointed at the failure of GAWU to do more for its core membership, that is, the members within the sugar industry. There may be even grumblings that the union is too close to the government and thus finds itself compromised in its negotiations with the State-owned sugar company. Even sugar workers have been known to make these complaints. But unless such criticisms lead to a Tsunami of defections from the membership, GAWU will remain strong and command respect within the industry.
There may be those who may justifiably feel that sugar workers are being shortchanged by GAWU. There may be those who share the view that the relationship between the union and the government is too close and does not allow for the union to take a militant stand against the sugar company.
These are the possible grounds upon which workers may be called to take their union to task. It is these grounds which the union can be questioned and its members asked to demand better representation. Not on the rewriting of history by the suggestion that Burnham’s recognition of GAWU was an act of generosity. If that was generosity then what do you call the compensation he offered to the nationalized industries?

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