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The Rusal behaviour is not for Guyana
Something has to be made clear and straight: this is Guyana in 2019, and not the post 1917 USSR. The concerted line of attack against the workers in the bauxite industry by Rusal points to a premeditated remorselessness that has not a single thread of healthy 
labour-management relations about it.
Neither does it have industrial relations best practices, or regard for basic human decency and human dignity. It reeks of the tyrannical and the intentionally degrading.
I think it is time that this government develops some cojones and send unambiguous messages to those who are bent on sending tough and harsh messages of their own to local workers; indeed, those who have taken the lead in delivering such without regard for protocols and processes.
The government’s messages have to be: ‘Don’t go down this unconstructive road. Don’t take these backward steps. And don’t mess with our people.’ That is exactly what Rusal has unveiled in one calculating powerplay and squeeze-play after another, and all of these are intended to grind the faces of the bauxite workers into the dust.
Not just their noses, but their whole heads are relentlessly locked in a relentless viselike escalation of tactics intended to bring them to heel and under the boots of their paymasters. It started with disincentivizing them (the paternalization and dismissal of 1%); then with demeaning them through the studied insult of ‘don’t let the door strike you in the behind on the way out.’
Out was the order, as in get off these grounds. Next, as a part of cutting off the air supply, came that despicable decision of no cooking for you, no food for you. How lower can it get?); and last, in a lightning series of stunning slaps (more likely kicks) to the body of the reeling workers, were get out of the houses, and get off jobs permanently, as in terminated. Over. Out.
Is this the 21st century? Or is this some preindustrial age with robber barons roaming the land unchecked and free to pummel and disgrace worker, government, and nation?
The fact that a foreign company does these things, without regard for the laws of Guyana, reeks of a new kind of either colonialist attitude or with distinctive vestiges of a plantation culture emanating from the top and meted out to the vulnerable and strapped, who are held hostage to the weapon of foreign investment, and then taken advantage of in the most alarming and demeaning manners.
As the unfolding of events has arrested the attention, one can sense an insensitivity and callousness that borders on the blatantly discriminatory. Look closely and objectively, and it becomes clear that the chain of negative proceedings is highly indicative of the embedded contempt that characterizes master-servant arrangements and relationships.
To state the matter with the candor it deserves, the thinking, decisions, and actions on the ground, as aimed by Rusal at the workers in one crippling fusillade after another, have been nothing short of the old slave system.
The heavy-handed, unilateral, provocative, and extremely hostile attitude of the Rusal management can only be accurately described as industrial terrorism.
In aggregate, the objective is to bring the workers to their knees and then force feed them the scant bitter rations, which they must accept (no discussion, no negotiation), and ultimately submit.
Without a doubt, the workers are being sent up the river, and without a paddle. They should not be on their own. Mr. Charles Ogle, the Chief Labor Officer, has made the state’s position clear. In a word: improper; in another: unacceptable.
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