Sugar workers are irresponsible

Nov 27, 2010 Letters

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Dear Editor,
GuySuCo lost the opportunity to produce US$880,000 worth of sugar because GAWU went on strike to press for 15 percent wage hike! Mind you this is the current strike. For 2010 there have been so much more. Last year sugar workers struck 216 times out of the 221 strikes recorded for the entire country.
Everyone is afraid to speak the truth about the problems in the sugar industry and the burden it is costing taxpayers. So afraid, that they prefer to skip around the elephant in the room, making up excuses, or regurgitating the sugar unions pitiful tales without even thinking.
The sugar workers and their unions, GAWU and NAAICE, were conditioned by the PPP to use industrial action as a political weapon and have now gone completely out of control.
If I didn’t have to help finance these workers insatiable greed I won’t care two hoots what they are doing. The PPP is in office for 18 years and its monster has grown bigger and now devouring it and the whole country.
It is as if these workers would wake up on the given day and look at the weather and decide that since they do not feel like working or upset over something they will strike. When the PPP was in opposition they used to say the workers were striking because of poor working conditions and pay. Komal Chand told Demerara Waves under the PNC sugar workers started getting a minimum wage and real wages were relatively higher. I also read that under the PNC Government sugar workers got tax free overtime.
When GuySuCo says the inclement weather is hampering production, Komal Chand said this is not so. Then when the unions are asked why workers are not meeting their targets Komal Chand blames the weather. Don’t tell me that GuySuCo in this modern age cannot produce a quality of cane that can be reaped before the inclement weather.
And don’t tell me that sugar workers are getting away with using inclement weather and all sorts of reasons as excuses for industrial actions to milk us taxpayers dry.
GuySuCo has not been making a profit for years, so sugar workers are not making money to pay themselves and are relying on every taxpayer to pay for their unscrupulous antics.
GAWU and NAACIE always say the problem is the Board of Directors. Sitting on the Board of Directors are the PPP big boys and girls, including Nanda Gopaul. The union is also offered to sit on the board but refusing to do so. So if the Board messing up then the PPP messing up and sugar workers cannot blame anybody but themselves for voting this party into power and having their union leaders absenting themselves from making decisions at the board level.
Sugar workers should be helping their Board and Government to succeed by working together to meet targets. Instead they are behaving like a water pipe that cannot be turned off.
It always boggles the mind that sugar workers always claim to be the victims even when they are wrong.
It makes no sense arguing for pay increase when the company shows you its balance sheet and how cash strapped it is, had to borrow money to pay increased wages for this year and when the workers are asked to meet production target which it keeps lowering, the workers walking off the job and leaving the canes to rotten in the fields.
When GuySuCo was looking at mechanization which meant that some workers would lose jobs, the PPP bigwigs decided that cannot happen because they will upset their supporters.
The current mechanization allows sugar workers to load the cane into the machine, but the company says the workers don’t even want to do that, walking away instead and leaving the canes on the ground! Sugar workers not only have a job, they also have the privilege of deciding when they will undermine production, when they will not work, when they will force Government to borrow more money to pay them increased wages and seem happy to tell taxpayers they will have to pony up for them.
With my income, after a 33.3 percent PAYE tax deduction, things are hard for me as it is already. I am fed up having to repay US$181M for a Skeldon Factory that is not functioning properly because a free pass was given to the engineers and quality assurances people who built it. Fed up with GuySuCo having to borrow money from me to pay wages and run the corporation. Fed up with canes deliberately left to rot because the PPP spoilt children decide they are not working and damn be production. Fed up with them not having to worry like me because they know taxpayers will pay their wages even though sugar isn’t worth a squat on the world market. Fed up with the PPP burdening taxpayers with more debts and unnecessary expenses to keep their brats contended. I am fed up and want it to be known. Sugar workers are irresponsible, callous and selfish and it is time they be told.
Navindra Persaud

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