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Some middle ground has to be reached quickly

Dec 05, 2019 Letters

Dear Editor,

I read with utter disbelief that sugar workers had gone on strike for an increase in wages and salaries. This is coming on the back of reports from Guysuco, that part of the reason it had struggled to survive and thrive in the past was the fact that more than 60 percent of its expenditure had to be apportioned to wages.
So some of the estates which were losing large chunks of cash to old equipment, poor crop cultivation and other forms of inefficiencies, were closed, leaving the current ones that we know are in use, still functioning. Or so we are told.
I therefore wonder, if the company, will in fact be able to meet the increases given the state of the sector, the frequent strikes and demands for even more wage increases.
Editor, some middle ground has to be reached here quickly as the workers and their unions must be aware that the situation in the industry is not getting better but rather worse. The same is true in the other countries producing sugar, except Belize I am told.
I also think that the years of unreasonable demands by the two unions over the decades for higher wages and salaries have pushed the expenditure and cash flow situation to such a high level that even if today’s demands for increases are reasonable, these would in fact amount to being unrealistic as the wages situation has simply gone too far.
I also wish to posit that the opposition might well be behind this latest move to encourage a workers strike as they might be making comparisons to the recent wages hike for public servants by the Government. One thing we know here is that no commercial undertaking can survive with a wages bill above 50 percent much less in the 60s, heading to 70 percent. That would be time to leave that very same industry.
Winston Mars

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