Sweet Justice

Nov 21, 2010 Editorial

We can now say that the crisis in the sugar industry has now become endemic. The ongoing one-week strike by GAWU, which has brought operations across the country to a grinding stop, is only the latest in a long series of tendentious actions from management and workers that may very well prove to be the death knell of sugar.
It is of no moment to look at the crisis as it stands; its roots lie buried in the historical adversarial relationship that has typified the industry from its literal master-slave origins. With all the talk and implementation of a strategic plan from 1998 to bring the industry to a 400,000+ ton level to the present blueprint for a turnaround from the 250,000 ton output to which it seems stuck, precious little was said about the ordinary workers on whose backs success actually depended.
On paper, the plan to expand sugar in Berbice was very sound. The region had less rainfall, better soils and larger acreage for expansion than the others. The economies of scale would surely bring down the average cost of production below the Holy Grail of US.12 cents per pound.
We may second-guess the choice of the Chinese to construct the factory that was the linchpin of the expansion plan – but to be fair they are not exactly slouches in the production of the commodity. Some are now clamouring that we ought to have gone with the Indians.
Can one envisage the howls of protests about ethnic favouritism if the government had gone that route?
But what was overlooked in all the “what if” scenarios was whether the best-case US 12 cents production costs would generate enough profits to raise the living standards of sugar workers significantly enough to keep them tied to the industry. It would not.
The planners neglected to factor in the reality that because of the historical exploitation of workers in the industry and the retention of the same relations of production to this day, very few Guyanese go into the cane fields voluntarily.
Parents see it as a sign of failure to send their children to work in the “backdam”. The irony is that the sugar plan of 1998 could only be successful if the rest of the Guyanese economy stagnated.
Then we all know of the numbers that emigrate from the general Guyanese population every year: sugar at the very best was never going to overcome the pull factors from the US – especially from Berbice where the expansion was centred but which had the largest number of “sponsors” for the valued green card.
On the high-cost Demerara plantations, alternative sources of employment added to the emigration numbers ensured that labour needs would always be problematical. It should not be surprising to learn that barely fifty percent of the optimum labour force shows up for work. The remittances that are swelling our foreign reserves are also helping guarantee low labour turnout in sugar.
What exacerbated the exodus from the cane fields was the refusal of management to improve relations in the fields. The older workers speak nostalgically about the “white” overseers that were with them “foot to foot” in the fields.
Maybe their nostalgia is apocryphal – not many cane cutters could have survived from the “White man” days – but it bespeaks of the absolute refusal of local “superintendents” and “managers to get their shoes dirty in the fields.
In this refusal they signal the further social distance of the ordinary field worker – and thereby reinforce the old longing to be free of the field.
GAWU insists that the present strike is about wage increases. But if the truth be told, as we revealed in a previous editorial, because of the relaxation of work rules and the introduction of all manner of incentives, cane cutters have never worked for as much money as they presently can.
The question is, can they do better elsewhere where the social stigmas are not so entrenched? Right now, and for the foreseeable future, they can. Can GuySuCo change the relations of production in time to reverse this trend? The jury is out.

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