Harvesting of Albion Estate’s second crop hit by strike

Aug 10, 2019 News

On Thursday, the first scheduled day of harvesting of the canes of the second crop, workers of all the gangs of Albion Estate, East Berbice, downed tools, severely affecting operations.

The Albion sugar workers on strike Thursday.

The workers are calling on the Guyana Sugar Corporation Inc. (GuySuCo) to address an increase in pay.
“It cannot be forgotten that sugar workers wages have been frozen since 2015. The naked discrimination against this hardworking group of the state’s employees manifested through denials of pay increases and attacks on other long standing benefits and conditions coupled with an ever rising tax burden, among the other hardships of contemporary Guyanese life, have severely eroded the workers and their families purchasing power and by extension, their standard of living,” the Guyana Agricultural and General Workers Union (GAWU) said yesterday of the situation.
The workers also are peeved over the arbitrary hiking of the estate’s weekly production targets. “They contend that the increase in the estate’s targets from 2,100 tonnes sugar to 2,140 would be disadvantageous and will prevent the estate from realizing the target and thus affecting incentives arising on the attainment of the target. The workers argue, quite correctly, that the inability to achieve target through the arbitrary increase could well daunt their commitment and belie the notion of the incentive in the first place.”
Additionally, workers engaged in the mechanical loading of canes said they are upset regarding what they believe is an unnecessary change in their hours of work.
“The bell loader operators as they are known would usually work from 06:00h to 18:00h during the cropping period, however, the corporation, without rhyme or reason and in ignorance of the workers’ concerns, are requiring the workers in question to work from 10:00h to 22:00h.”
GAWU said that another issue regards the workers engaged in the mechanical tillage tasks who have rightly disagreed with the arbitrary downward adjustments of their pay rates pertaining to certain tasks.
“The union is awaiting a meeting with the Industrial Relations Department of GuySuCo to address the matter. Indeed, the several matters and concerns which, it seems, are not being sincerely considered by the GuySuCo have deeply upset the workers. They charged that they continue to give their best efforts and seek, at all times, to go above and beyond and yet, it appears, they are treated in the shabbiest of manners. This is not a healthy development and we are hopeful that the Corporation will, with an open mind and listening ear, consider the workers cries.”
Albion is one of three sugar estates remaining under the state-owned GuySuCo.
Four other estates- Skeldon, Rose Hall, Enmore and Wales – are up for privatisation and divestment.

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