It’s now almost ritualistic that GAWU and GuySuCo will be at odds over wage increases each year

Nov 21, 2010 Letters

Dear Editor,
Another year rolls round and the Guyana Agricultural and General Workers Union (GAWU) is at odds with GuySuCo over wage increases resulting in major industrial action across the entire sugar industry.
It seems as if this union gleans its information from a place not known to many, which provides clear indications that GuySuCo is doing well, making a profit and is therefore capable of increasing wages and salaries each year regardless of its financial position.
GuySuCo is hobbling along trying desperately to produce as much sugar as possible with the many challenges that severely affect its efficiencies. And with the EU price cuts that are in full effect, the company needs every grain of sugar it can get to fulfill its contractual agreements with markets that provide substantial foreign exchange for itself and the country.
It is now almost ritualistic that GAWU and GuySuCo will be at odds over wage increases each year, resulting in some severe form of industrial action that often places GuySuCo in very precarious positions, resulting in the significant loss of income.
Skeldon has so far not lived up to expectations and is arguably a shameful creation of this administration, which Guyanese will have to pay for in many years to come.
GuySuCo itself has engaged in a style of musical chairs management surreptitiously disguised as one blueprint or another and has not seriously addressed many of the core issues like its human resource management that costs the company hundreds of millions of dollars each year.
The company relies heavily of human labour, and as it has been demonstrated so many times before, when this labour makes itself unavailable the company hemorrhages financially. However, one must have to wonder about the kind of reasoning that is behind the ‘brilliance’ of the union demanding more money from a corporation that alleges to be operating at a loss.
Is GuySuCo really making a profit from the business of sugar in which it engages to pay wage increases each year? Is the company reaching its yearly production targets set each year?
If the answers to those question are no, then regardless of how much the union claims to have the best interest of their workers at heart, calling for wage increases from a struggling company that continues to make a loss is ridiculous and unconscionable!
This recent spate of industrial action will hurt GuySuCo severely, as it limps along struggling to survive in these turbulent economic times. The union has its work to do and certainly does not shirk at making this known. However, I believe that time has come to have Mr. Komal Chand sit on the Board of Directors of GuySuCo.
I strongly believe that he has much to contribute to the human resource and industrial relations management of the company. This way he can surely help engineer crafty new policies that can better serve both the company and the workers and avoid Guyana’s sugar industry from deterioration.
Richard Francois

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It’s now almost ritualistic that GAWU and GuySuCo will be at odds over wage increases each year

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