Blairmont factory resumes

Feb 23, 2012 News

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…but “only 55 harvesters (out of 1108) turned out to work.”

By Leon Suseran

The General Secretary of the Guyana Agricultural & General Workers Union

(GAWU) Seepaul Narine is urging sugar workers at Blairmont to go back to work and “let due process take its course”.
Narine noted that the resumption of the Blairmont workers will automatically put the Commission of Inquiry into action and the commission “will commence its work and present a report within three weeks”.
He asserted that GuySuCo has committed to paying the Annual Production Incentive (API) on March 16, 2012, and added that the commission will “implement recommendations of the Joint Job Evaluation Committee”, noting that some 6,200 jobs will be evaluated and “there are recommendations on the payment so that there will be increases– costing the industry $1.3B a year”.
This new increase, he stated, will be implemented from June this year.
However, all was not well again at Blairmont yesterday, the day after the announcement was made. The factory seemed to have been in operation on Wednesday morning, but only 55 cane harvesters turned out in the fields.
The majority of the harvesters did not heed the call of the General Secretary because they (the harvesters) were unsatisfied with the less-than-desirable payment that would be meted out to them for the spoilt canes that have been waiting for over a week in the punts at the Blairmont Estate canal.
When Kaieteur News arrived at Blairmont yesterday morning, several harvesters and their field reps gathered in the GAWU booth near the estate and said that they were not going to work.
Field Secretary Hardyal Ramdiyal stated that “so far, only a few turn out”. He added that “this morning, only 55 harvesters (out of 1108) turned out to work”.
As the Field Secretary, Ramdiyal said that he supports a Commission of Inquiry which will be held that would investigate the calls by the sugar workers for the dismissal of Estate Manager Corbette Victorine.
“So there is full resumption in the factory and cultivation, only the harvesters are out (striking)”. He stated that the reason is “the bad weather and there is some other problems with some stale canes– the stale cane payments– so we need to address that”.
He planned a meeting with the Field Manager later yesterday.

“When the canes are burnt and are left for a period of time– like 14, 15 days– it becomes, you know, powdery and it has ants and other impediments in it, and when you chop the bottom the top can fall and can cause accidents,” he revealed.
“They have to pay that — that is a part of obstacle payment, and I have to make representation to see if the managers would agree to that.”
The workers present at the Estate yesterday morning also said that one of the other reasons why they did not turn out was that “up to now, we have not seen anyone from the leadership (of the company)”.
“We still waiting fuh de top levels– Mr (Leslie) Ramsammy never come and meet de reps dem..he come last night (Tuesday) and meet wid de supervisors dem and the foremen, and he never come and meet de reps”, said one worker.
“The cane is 14 days old. The people want to go to work but de price is not suitable for dem to work and dey cannot honour dese pay; I ain’t know if dem go cut dat cane to grind or throw it away. Dat cane is 14- days old and get powder; dat can make you fall ill, sick, it’s unfair to work there, de condition is too bad,” explained another worker.
Ramdiyal revealed that in excess of 243 punts of cane are loaded in the canal awaiting to be offloaded. Those punts have been waiting there since the strike began last week Monday. There are over 125 punts (of cane) “waiting to be cut in the field”. This situation, he explained, will eventually result in one having to use more tons of cane to produce more sugar since the cane quality deteriorated.
Meanwhile, Narine and two other GAWU reps appeared on a live telecast on a Berbice Television station on Tuesday evening. Narine disclosed that a Commission of Inquiry, at the request of the Minister of Labour, has been tasked with meeting and investigating claims made by disgruntled sugar workers at the Blairmont Estate regarding the removal of the General Manager, Corbette Victorine. Appearing on the programme, too were Brentnol Richards, Senior Executive Member GAWU Rose Hall Estate and Supervisor for the New Amsterdam area, Harvey Tambarin.
Tambarin said that even though the industrial action started by the workers more than a week ago started on the basis of several minor issues, the call for the removal of Victorine became the focal point in the strike action. He noted that the issue of the customer practice was settled. He noted that the strike at Rose Hall Estate on Monday was represented by the union since reps were with the workers, “but we do have outside elements provoking the situation, that is leading a handful of people astray by telling them lies for whatever political mileage, I don’t know”.
Narine tried to put the Rose Hall issue into perspective by saying that “they have legitimate issues and after the news by the estate that the API payment would be delayed, that created a lot of dissatisfaction and there are elements among them who are making a new attempt to divide the sugar workers, because, you know, they want to have the militancy of the sugar workers and I heard them say they want to form their own union, but this is just another attempt– there have been many attempts before and it is just nothing short of mischief, because I saw a leaflet which they shared out at Blairmont”.
Narine dispelled allegations that GAWU “was not with the workers” but recalled “last year, 2011, 2010, when they were not getting certain increases and even when we had to be in dispute with the former president (Jagdeo) and we had confrontation….over the years, we were born out of struggles and the union remains committed that we are fighting for and defending workers and we will continue to do that because that is what we are there for.”
The perception, he said, is a misconception and not factual. He noted that the Blairmont workers received $96M in Obstacle Payments for last year too, because of GAWU’s representation, “because we are committed to representing and the reps are the ambassadors at the local level and we are always there on the ground through the Field Secretaries as well”. “Tell me which other union you could pick up the telephone and call and air the grievances for sugar workers?” he asked.
Narine advised workers to “go out to work”…and “there will be no victimisation; I have cleared that with GuySuCo”. “If the industry had been privately- owned”, he noted, many of the benefits enjoyed by the sugar workers would not have been there, and today we might have been talking about closure and severance pay for people”.
“What we are doing and our representation….the employment costs would have never been $17.4B, 66.4 per cent of revenue in 2010, the last year that the audited accounts had been published. One needs to be honest and recognise, you need to look at the period from 1989 when Collective Bargaining was restored, to now, and say to yourselves, if it was not a fact that you are living better, out of the union’s representation”.
Up to late yesterday afternoon, Ramdiyal was not able to meet with the Field Manager of Blairmont to discuss the stale cane payment issues.

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