AFC WINS MAJOR VICTORY FOR SUGAR WORKERS! BUT WHO LOSES?

May 19, 2011 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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It is not unusual to find some Guyanese in the Diaspora having to travel as much as two hours to get to and from work each day. It is also not strange to discover that there are many who do this for an extended number of years simply to be able to provide for their families.
There are many Guyanese who feel that those of us who return from aboard had life on a platter, that things were easy. The opportunities were there without doubt but you had to go after those opportunities even if it meant traveling one hundred miles to work each day. You did it because nothing good in life comes easy and to take care of your family you have to work and go where the work is.
Immigrants go where the jobs are because they know that no amount of protesting is going to make the United States government find jobs for them near to where they live. If a job is available two hundred miles away, and no alternative is available, persons will travel to take up these jobs because unless they do they cannot pay their bills.
Fast forward to Guyana. The Diamond Estate has been closed. This means that large numbers of cane harvesters can no longer find jobs at Diamond. Many of those who worked at Diamond Estate live between Herstelling and Grove. They travel each day to work. With the closure of the estate there is work for them but in other estates located some distance away.
The workers want to work but they need help. Why therefore these workers not be provided with free transportation to other estates? Why instead of the government having to pay some $300 million for severance, a deal could not be worked out whereby the sugar corporation would assist these workers by providing them with transportation to work on other estates including estates in West Demerara and East Demerara.
The Guyana Sugar Corporation has a number of vehicles available in which they transport workers. If the sugar company can afford to provide buses to transport the children of senior staff to school, they should be able to afford to use their own vehicles to take workers from Diamond to other estates in East and West Demerara.
The sugar corporation recognizes that turnout is a problem on most estates. So why lay off workers instead of finding means to encourage them to work on other estates.
If workers are brought in from Diamond to work on these estates, and provided with transportation back home, no matter how long the journey takes, it will force many of those who feel that they should only work when they feel like working to value the employment that they have.
The same three hundred million that will be used to pay severance to sugar workers could have been put to help the labour situation in the industry by providing support measures to improve workers’ turnout.
In this way, the sugar corporation can obtain the labour force that is needed, and the workers who would otherwise not find jobs could receive some assistance to take up employment. Everyone wins!
The sugar corporation is, however, not losing from the present arrangement. It will not cost them a cent because the money is coming from the treasury and not from the corporation.
The Diamond workers are happy because they were fighting all along for severance and now they have won that fight thanks to the Alliance for Change.
Had it not been for the AFC jumping into this dispute and taking up the workers cause, there would have been no intervention. The government had all along been resisting paying the workers severance and it was only when the AFC decided to take the matter to court that the government knew that it had to act to avoid the AFC gaining political capital.
The workers are, however, not stupid. They understand fully what is happening. They know that it is because they went to the AFC that there was a change in the position adopted by the government. But while the AFC may have won a major victory for sugar workers, unless the turnout of labour situation on the estates improves, the entire country will lose.
But what about the industry, how does it benefit by the paying of severance to workers? Will those workers take up employment in other estates?
At present there is little incentive for the severed workers to go and work at other estates. But that can be changed if the corporation and government come up with an additional package that would see workers from these states being given assistance to work in other estates, including working in Skeldon.
There are many persons from the rural areas who are working in the city within the construction sector. They either stay at friends of relatives or stay on the worksite, and they often go home every two weeks to their families. This is nothing new and has been happening for decades.
So why cannot the same happen in the sugar industry? Why cannot some form of transportation be provided to these workers to cane harvester so that they can find employment within other estates?
If this happens it will have a double effect. It will mean that those who are without jobs because of the closure of certain estates, will now be able to find work. They will be happy.
And secondly, all of those workers who stay home for days and only work whenever they please will come to their senses and realize that there are other persons willing to take their place.

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