The Sugar Industry – Pacesetters in Human Resources Management (Part I)

Jan 04, 2022 Letters

---

Dear Editor,

Kaieteur News – As proactive as the British owned Bookers Sugar Estates Ltd was in professionalising their management philosophy and practices in this colony, there was a time when the Canadian owned Demerara Bauxite Company (up the Demerara River) could set positive examples for their coastal counterparts to follow, including in the area of Personnel Management (since upgraded to Human Resources Management).
In the latter case, there was the critical urgency to develop an intellectual capacity beyond just agriculture and engineering – in order to cope with the plethora of industrial relations issues activated by the following worker representations:
• Manpower Citizens Association (MPCA) displaced by
• Guiana Industrial Workers’ Union (GIWU) soon after renamed Guyana Agricultural Workers’ Union (GAWU)
• Guiana Headmen’s Union (GHU) – who represented the first level of supervision in the field. The position was retitled ‘Field Foreman’.
• Sugar Estates Supervisors’ Association (SESA) – represented Field and Factory Supervisors.
• Guiana and West Indies Sugar Boilers’ Union (G&WISBU) who represented Sugar Boilers and Process Foremen as the latter also travelled to work in sugar-producing Barbados, Antigua and St. Kitts.
•Sick nurses and Dispensers’ Association (S&DA) – Represented Certified Nurses, Nurse/Midwives, Midwives, and of course Dispensers.
At the time, the industry’s negotiating entity was the Guyana Sugar Producers’ Association (GSPA) (consisting of Bookers Sugar Estates and Demerara Company – former owner of Diamond and Leonora Estates).
By 1977, except for GAWU worker categories, all other staff unions had coalesced into a new multi-disciplinary bargaining entity called the National Association of Agricultural, Commercial and Industrial Employees (NAACIE). It was they who successfully negotiated the reduction of the working week from 48 to 40 hours.
But there were significant initiatives taken by the industry earlier. These included the following:
1973 – Institution of statutory medical examinations of employees, with emphasis on field and factory workers, but also including all ‘senior staff’.
– Complementary execution of formal employment contracts
1975- Introduction of a guaranteed three-day workweek, particularly during the
‘out-of-crop’ period
To retrogress, it should be mentioned that BSE introduced in 1964, the first Contributory Hospitalisation and Maternity Insurance Scheme in the country, to boost the free medical services already provided by Estate Medical Officers and aforementioned paramedical staff – service still currently provided.
Of course, the Apprentice Training School at Port Mourant was established since 1957 (initially as a five-year programme) aimed at training in such skills (some of which have long disappeared) as Agriculture Mechanic, Automobile Electrician, Blacksmith, Carpenter, Diesel Fitter, Instrument Mechanic, Moulder, Mason, Bricklayer, Pattern-Maker, Turner, Welder and more, now unheard of. All of these skills were graded by the relevant senior professionals in a carefully organised, “Regrading and Reclassification Scheme.”
Another creative human resources intervention in those halcyon days was the conduct of an annual performance appraisal exercise aimed principally at awarding merit increments within the parameters of negotiated salary scales but importantly at identifying potential for growth. The exercise was taken seriously enough that managers were trained repeatedly not only to conduct it, but also in the critical interviewing process, which complemented each appraisal and the award of subsequent merit increments.
The industry, however, cannot take full credit for initiating a comprehensive Occupational Health and Safety Policy. In fact, it was the Zaman Ali Advisory Committee in 1970 who highlighted lapses in such critical areas as:
•Water Supply
•Labour Transportation
•Loading Ramps
•First Aid Facilities
•Provision of Safety Equipment
amongst others.
There followed the construction and implementation of a most comprehensive Occupational Health and Safety Policy by BSE, including the establishment of Safety Committees on every estate, with substantial employee membership. Safety training became a statutory item in the related recruitment process along with the provision of necessary protective clothing and equipment.

Following the transition to GuySuCo, management sought to establish a form of communication with employees that at least would partially neutralise a continuing abrasive relationship with those they managed. After intensive brainstorming sessions at a Personnel Officers Conference in the late 1970s, the consensus reached was to devise a communication construct to be called ‘Worker Participation’, for each location – consisting of managers, supervisors, other employees (though not as formal union representation).
The arrangement was sensitively designed to provide for rotation of chairmanship between managerial and worker levels, and with the insistence that members occupied alternate seats around the table as they addressed unit and department operational issues. It was organised to be a tiered structure of:
-Department (essentially Field and Factory)
-Estate (individually)
-Regional (Berbice, Demerara)
Minutes/Reports were sent to the Head Office for review, approval and implementation of recommendations on subject areas of industry-wide implications. Inculcated in the exercise was an environment of equality in which participants could speak freely with, rather than to, one another.
Actually, the formal establishment of a Communications Department in Sugar goes back to the late 1950s when BSE, on behalf of the Booker Group of Companies, began publishing the fortnightly paper ‘Booker News’. The latter transitioned to ‘Sugar News’ after nationalisation; with the print supplemented by radio presentations. It was also those days of industry-wide community development programmes, which inspired the production of Estate Newsletters, subsequently complemented by regular TV presentations by a carefully selected team of communication professionals.
The foregoing is merely to underscore that the sugar industry is more than just about operational productivity. Indeed, it is an exemplar of the ‘humanity’ required in organisational management anywhere. One reflects on Jock Campbell, Chairman of the Booker Group Worldwide, on one of his biennial visits to Guyana, scolding the Blairmont Estate management team including this Personnel Officer, to the effect that he preferred the subject of discussion to be about ‘human’ rather than ‘industrial’ relations.
E.B. John
Human Resources Management Executive

---

---