Sugar industry managerial workers should not be left on their own

Oct 09, 2021 Letters

Dear Editor,

It is difficult not to empathise with GAWU’s welcome of the grant to be made to severed sugar workers, who presumably were paid the respective severance amounts due. There is clearly no comparable formula that obtains with this grant.
Next, there is the argument that workers retained should benefit similarly, arguably on the factual basis that, they received no increases since 2015, the year in which the pay structure was computed by the international consultancy experts Hays plc, and approved by this same administration to be applied across the industry. It is in these circumstances that all managerial staffers were also affected and have not benefitted from any increase since.
However, it needs to be clarified in the first instance whether the ‘senior staff’ in the same ‘severed’ condition will be eligible for the ‘worker’ grant. The latter presumably must be wondering. Next, one hopes that the Union has in mind to include the ‘worker’ categories at the Head Office (who hardly benefit from representation) amongst those to whom the grant should be extended. But it is not as if both ‘worker’ and ‘manager’ do not have a collaborative relationship within the same target oriented organisation. How does one first address the financial drought experienced by those whose productivity is measured practically on a daily basis, when public servants who are not subject to any form of performance appraisal, are ‘granted’ increases almost annually?
The fact is that the records will reveal that GuySuCo’s managers have not benefitted from any basic salary improvement for the past six years. They must be the object of sympathy from counterparts in both public and private sectors (and who are hardly affected by the weather). Surely it must be appreciated that like every worker in the industry, and elsewhere, they have to cope with increasing living costs; that they too must maintain anxious children who, while aspiring to careers, reflect on the degree of developmental constipation with which their parents (managerial workers) must contend.
So, here is asking GAWU to remember that there is no substantive distinction between levels of ‘sugar workers’; that there exists a ‘Succession Plan’ in which one can move from ‘Graduate Apprentice’ to ‘Engineer’; that there are communication arrangements to provide for consensual decision-making between ‘employer’ and ‘employee’; that they are events where all socialise as equals; and that, in the final analysis, there is the fundamental bond of commitment to the survival of the industry.
In, not necessarily, the final analysis, the economic competition so fast developing in the country, increasingly generates other employment opportunities – more so at a time when technological skills are so much more preferable to future employees. Motivation is critical for all in the sugar industry. The differential on which the union compulsively insists has become irrelevant in times when ‘teamsmanship’ is so desperately needed.
Kindly note: managers are equally critical to the survival of the sugar industry. More importantly is the fact that all are human beings, which makes the point that the Minister of Agriculture should be a proactive contributor to any further discourse, as the decision-maker accountable for the performance of the sugar industry.

Sincerely,
Human Resources Management Observer

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