Even the least accomplished students of our nation’s history have a sense of the significance of sugar to the Guyanese society. We have come to understand the   complexity of the problems confronting the industry, problems which go beyond its economic importance. Indeed,  one might argue that, over time,  many of the problems of sugar have become  endemic, systemic and structural.

Quite apart from the fact that sugar is indelibly etched in our nation’s history, the product, remains – at least in the foreseeable future - inextricably linked to the economic well-being of the nation. Confronting and overcoming the challenges facing the industry, therefore, ought to be a critical national preoccupation.

That having been said the difficulties confronting the industry are formidable and their resolution is linked to issues that go well beyond its economic performance.

Sugar’s industrial relations culture, for example -  from slavery, through indentureship, through the struggle for political and workers rights and political independence - has been characterized by struggle and militancy. Students of industrial relations contend that the post-1992 era has been characterized by an altogether different agenda and that many of the social and political issues that continue to confront the country today and which, hitherto, were very much a part of the agenda of sugar workers, no longer appear to concern their unions – at least not to the same extent as they did prior to the accession to office by  the incumbent political administration. As a consequence, questions have arisen as to the real motives for their militancy  during the period leading to what the current political administration has described as the “dawn of democracy.”

Interestingly, the present management of GUYSUCO have made no secret of their belief that the posture of the unions representing sugar workers, particularly GAWU, has now become characterized by thoroughly unreasonable wage increase demands that   threaten the very viability of the industry, though GUYSUCO remains acutely sensitive to the organic connection between GAWU and the ruling party and is inclined to  tread carefully in its  encounters with the union.

Setting aside for the moment the fact that this is the same management so roundly and pointedly admonished by President Bharrat Jagdeo just a few weeks ago for the underperformance of industry, one is certainly inclined to wonder whether, perhaps, signs are not beginning to emerge that GAWU has become an unexpected thorn in GUYSUCO’s side. Whereas through all of the other aforementioned epochs the struggle of the sugar workers had come to be identified with noble national issues like human rights and political freedoms,   are their representatives now more preoccupied with looking out for number one – or, as the management of GUYSUCO claims,   concerning themselves with wage demands which the industry simply cannot afford to meet?

If such claims are bound to be rejected by the workers’ representatives   we need to remind ourselves that as humans, we are inclined to act in what we perceive to be our best interests and that the tendency by the workers to seek to get what they can from the industry at this time may well be driven  by signals which they are receiving  regarding the future of sugar.

On one side of our ever-present political divide opponents of government’s continued support for the sugar industry who insist that sugar is in decline   unmistakably send such a signal to the workers in the industry.   On the other side,   those who continue to make a case for the viability of sugar question Europe’s motives for the ending of the sugar protocol and for the controversial Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA)  with respect to these assertions one is surely inclined to wonder as to which  Guyanese  in their heart of hearts truly believe that we who are so deeply divided against ourselves can stave off the might of a unified  Europe.

On both sides of the divide, therefore, toning down the rhetoric is important since if we continue to send signals that the sugar industry is as good as dead we create as good a reason as any for the sugar workers to seek to extract the last of its lifeblood.

Industrial relations aside, GUYSUCO’s management has cited weather patterns - essentially the age old complaint of too much sun or too much rain – as reasons for the underperformance of the industry.   These  arguments have also been ‘rubbished’ by President Jagdeo as being no more than tired and time-worn excuses  trotted out with  monotonous regularity whenever the industry is in trouble. Interestingly, President Jagdeo’s roughing up   of the GUYSUCO management had been preceded by a government  advertisement for a Financial and Production Review of the sugar industry. If the President is right about the performance of the management of GUYSUCO, however, a logical follow-up to his concerns ought, surely, to be a wide-ranging human resource review which – at the very least – undertakes a careful and comprehensive evaluation of the management capabilities and actual performances of those functionaries who hold critical management portfolios within the industry. In this regard - and while one is uncertain as to whether the President’s criticisms are directed at the   Booker-Tate management contingent  (Booker-Tate has held a management contract with GUYSUCO since  1991) - it is altogether more than reasonable to suggest that  the performances of local managers, particularly those in the highest echelons of GUYSUCO, must also not escape critical scrutiny.

As part of this pursuit it would be more than worthwhile to seek to examine recruitment and promotion procedures for local managers in order that we might satisfy ourselves that the principle of merit has been scrupulously applied in the fashioning of a management team for what, for all its problems, is still the country’s most important industry.   To put it bluntly, we really should be seeking to determine whether – as the President may well be inclined to believe - below par performance at high levels within GUYSUCO may not be a direct result of flawed selection processes which may not always rate merit and qualifications as the highest criteria for preferment.

A newspaper editorial such as this cannot even begin to comprehensively cover the myriad components of this complex problem.  We have not, for example, even begun to address the issue of the implications of the relationships between GAWU/NAACIE and their ideological parents -  the PPP - for both parties in the pursuit of their distinct and sometimes conflicting obligations. That notwithstanding, we offer this parting reflection.  Sugar has been with us for near four hundred years. We as a nation must collectively decide what its place in Guyana is to be, ten, twenty, fifty and one hundred years hence.  Make no mistake about it, the core of the sugar industry, cane husbandry and harvesting remains largely a hazardous, arduous and backbreaking job. A critical question that arises out of this reality is whether or not it is our desire that our children and grandchildren be harvesters of sugar cane one hundred years hence.  Our response to this question could provide a logical basis for a much needed national contemplation on the way forward for the sugar industry.