Rusal workers struggle as COVID-19, labour woes bite deep

Apr 19, 2020 News

Scores of Rusal workers are continuing to struggle with no idea where their next pay day is coming from.

The blocked Berbice River, in the Kwakwani area.

Their last salary was in February when the state-owned National Industrial and Commercial Investments Inc. (NICIL), which owns 10 percent of the Bauxite Company of Guyana Inc., stepped in and paid their salaries.
This would have been after the bauxite company sent home over 300-plus workers after tensions rose.
They have not been paid for March and it is more than half way in April now.
“We are appealing for attention to us,” says Ephraim Velloza, a union leader of the workers.
He is one who defied Rusal/BCGI by refusing to move out of the Region 10 mining site area.
In fact, since January, the workers have blocked the Upper Berbice River, in the Kwakwani area, in an attempt to force the bauxite company to respect their demands for better pay and conditions.
“We are allowing river traffic, but nothing from Rusal to pass,” Velloza told Kaieteur News.
He spoke last week as a guest on Kaieteur Radio.
Thanking the different ministries, the official said that food supplies for workers, who are camped out guarding the river, are running out. It is a desperate situation now.
“We are depending on nearby residents who are with us. We are asking for intervention from the relevant authorities.”
In late February, General Secretary of the Guyana Bauxite and General Workers Union (GBGWU), Lincoln Lewis, disclosed that workers started collecting their February salary with money also remitted to the bank accounts of a number of them.
“We had submitted to the government a menu of measures that can help alleviate the hardships of workers of Rusal. We told them that NICIL as part owner has to play a bigger role. The approval was granted by the Ministry of Finance and the workers have been paid.”
Government, the union and Russian-controlled Company, have been locked in a battle after the company started sending home workers in January, claiming it has run out of fuel, as its duty free concessions and approvals have expired.
It started sending home workers…in all 326.
The workers, for the second time in as many years, blocked the Berbice River, even defying police ranks, effectively stopping vessels, including bauxite-laden ones from leaving. Vessels with logs were allowed through.
Workers have been camping out at the riverfront area, not from mine sites, guarding the barriers across the river.
The government has said it has written the Attorney General’s Chambers asking for legal advice on the sacking of the workers.
Rusal, one of the biggest bauxite companies in the world, has been on a collision course with government and the union since 2009, after it fired almost 60 workers for taking protest action for better conditions.
Since then, BCGI/Rusal has refused to meet the Labour Department, and even derecognized the union.
It was last year that 90 workers were sacked which sparked a one-month standoff, including the blockage of the Berbice River.
The government had to step in to broker a deal for workers to return to their jobs and negotiations to begin for salary increases.
Rusal has come under fire for not declaring profits since it came here in the mid-2000s, but yet was taking out boatloads of bauxite monthly. It has benefitted, reportedly, from almost US$100M in duty free fuel as well as on tax breaks on equipment and vehicles.
Compounding the situation now would be the measures taken by Government in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.