FITUG accuses AFC of possible union busting

Mar 18, 2012 News

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The Federation of Independent Trade Unions of Guyana (FITUG), is concerned over what it sees as an overt attempt by the Alliance For Change (AFC) party to undermine the work of the Guyana Agricultural and General Workers Union (GAWU) in the sugar industry.
“The issue that concerns FITUG has to do with a political party’s overt attempts to undermine and discredit GAWU’s historic and

current representation of the nation’s sugar workers. The political party, evidently, feels that the time is ripe to mislead the country’s hardworking sugar workers with bad, unsound, non-industrial advice and in so doing is sowing confusion and encouraging division of the industry’s workforce,” the body said in a statement yesterday.
GAWU is a significant part of FITUG.
“This sort of political intrusion, FITUG feels, can only pose further threats to trade unionism in Guyana, is clearly intended to fulfill a political agenda and, in the end, serve anti-working class objectives.”
Over the past weeks, AFC has been visiting sugar estates where there are strikes and talking to workers on the problems. There have been several strikes in the sugar industry for this year already.
“FITUG has been briefed but has also garnered from the media, some components of which are obviously biased, that the Alliance for Change (AFC) political party in hastening to offer support to sugar workers engaged in work-stoppages in several estates has done so without having a full grasp, obviously, of the issues involved. In the sectors and at the locations it interfered with, the AFC leaders and activists stirred dissension within and between sections of the workforce and somehow even managed to complicate a few issues that workers were peeved over.”
FITUG said that the AFC presence placed additional strains and demands on the union to address and resolve.
“It should be noted that all of the issues which emerged in recent months in the industry, it was the union, that played the pivotal role in successfully representing them.
Whilst FITUG is aware of an historic tradition in Guyana and elsewhere where politicians and trade unionists collaborate even to the extent of trade unionists entering the political arena and vice versa, and though we also accept that sugar workers could very well, for various reasons, seek relief and representation from politicians, FITUG views the AFC motivation as stemming from political expediency especially as the AFC activists pay no attention to trade union structure and grievance procedures.”
FITUG accused AFC of inciting and “both subtly and overtly goad” some GAWU members to think of some alternative union.
“Our affiliate GAWU has explained the various grievances raised and the swift representations it has given and settlements reached.
From addressing GuySuCo’s lapses with workers’ NIS records and benefits to issues of “days offered” per week and changes in the Corporation’s “Business Rules” to making all Saturdays “Premium Days” et al, GAWU has pointed to its established structure which has proven workable up to now whereby the respective Estates’ Union Shop Stewards will first address complaints as they are trained to do before those unresolved ones are brought to the Union’s Executive for another stage of deliberations.”
FITUG said that the AFC’s modus operandi seemingly is to pounce upon an industrial issue, exploit the workers’ complaints and get instant media publicity without bothering to seek any comments from the sugar union.
“FITUG can understand the impatience of the aggrieved workers being influenced by irresponsible persons and buy into ploys of unsound and fanciful promises. At the same time FITUG frowns on those who resort to such tactics and techniques which could have negative consequences to Trade Unionism as a whole.”
In championing and representing the many concerns and issues of workers in the sugar industry several of which the GAWU has laid at the doorstep of GuySuCo’s management practices.
“A responsible and militant Union, as the GAWU has shown historically that it cannot be ostrich-like and hide from such stark realities whereby the industry’s revenue losses since 2006 when the European Union (EU) slashed the price of sugar amounts to some $9B or current employment costs being about sixty-three (63) per cent of GuySuCo’s revenue according to the last audited accounts (2010).”
FITUG wondered why the AFC was focusing on GAWU and its membership. “If the AFC seeks to show concern for aggrieved and disgruntled workers, these can be found in several places and among many workers who are not even unionized. GAWU and its members being targeted by the AFC seem to be the latest attempt in a string of such attempts in the union’s history.”
“FITUG, therefore, advises GAWU and its members to be on guard, mischief is afoot.”

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