Some Guyana Power and Light (GPL) employees yesterday resorted to strike action after the company began meeting some of the workers it intends to sever as part of a rationalisation programme, which starts today.
The National Association of Agricultural, Commercial and Industrial Employees (NAACIE) said it had received word that as of today the company will be sending off some 43 employees.
Employees from the company’s Middle Street, Victoria, Garden of Eden, New Amsterdam, Onverwagt, Essequibo, Anna Regina and Wakenaam locations participated in the activity, as some of their colleagues have already received letters instructing them to meet management to discuss their severance packages. However, the Ministry of Labour has intervened and is to referee a meeting between the two parties. Depending on its outcome, the strike action may be called off today, NAACIE President Kenneth Joseph told this newspaper yesterday.
In a statement issued last night, GPL said its operations were still functional despite the industrial action taken by some 69 of its employees represented by the union. It said customers would be kept apprised of new developments.
The power company said the workers were protesting a decision it made since 2006 to “rationalise the workforce”.
According to the statement, the industrial action was taken when GPL’s human resources director began meeting workers who will be affected by the programme, which is part of a detailed mechanical modernisation plan that includes the eventual closure of the 55-year-old steam turbine station at Kingston.
The GPL statement said the rationalisation exercise has a direct bearing on the significant increases in the cost of GPL’s operations and on the increases in the cost of fuel at the start of the year. It said wages and salaries had also doubled in the last five years.
“It is therefore imperative for GPL to control its costs in order to avoid further tariff increases,” the release said.
According to the company, from mid January (today) 43 employees would be severed and they would be given every benefit in accordance with the existing Collective Labour Agreement with the union.
Dozens of employees yesterday lined the avenue outside the company’s Main Street location in protest at the company’s announced actions.
Joseph said the company and the union were in discussions under the chairmanship of Head of the Presidential Secretariat Dr Roger Luncheon after the union sought government’s intervention in the matter.
He said the company was asked to provide certain information regarding the changes it proposed as part of its restructuring and how these would affect the workers.
Joseph said only recently, the company started to transfer some of the union’s members from the Garden of Eden power station to the almost defunct Kingston station without any explanation. “This is preparing them to get knocked off,” he declared.
He said that after he learnt of the transfers and that the company was meeting workers and discussing payment for them, he wrote to GPL making his concerns known. He said the letter was copied to President Bharrat Jagdeo and Labour Minister Manzoor Nadir.
According to him, on Friday that he received a letter from management, which informed that as of today, persons would be sent off.
However, he contended that GPL is in breach of the Severance Pay Act and that even while letters informing staff of their termination were being issued, the company was hiring staff.
Joseph said GPL was attempting to weaken the labour movement and he insisted that it must meet the union to say which positions it intended to make redundant.
“They want to take certain jobs in transmission and distribution and put them in the hands of contractors,” he said.
The union head is calling on the company to honour the laws. He called for GPL and the union to discuss the reasons for laying-off staff so it would be in a better position to say who should go.
Meanwhile, some unionised workers at the company’s Main Street head office were forced to remain at work as the union representative was absent from work yesterday.
A NAACIE Berbice representative, who insisted that the company’s actions were unjustified, told Stabroek News that six of his colleagues had received the letters asking them to meet management and they proceeded to Georgetown for this yesterday.
“I am going to be honest,” he said, “there are some people who don’t work and always report sick and they have bad records, but they have to sit down and carefully decide who they will send home.”
He said he was hoping for good sense to prevail at today’s meeting and for the company to carry out its restructuring programme with consideration for its workers.
NAACIE represents an estimated 850 of GPL’s employees and as part of the restructuring programme, 250 of them may be severed.
The employees being targeted are those from the transmission and distribution and generation departments, the union said.
Speaking on the issue last year, Prime Minister Sam Hinds had said, “I don’t see it as a retrenchment. The matter was put to me and I see it as a reorganisation of how the work is done; from company employee to sub-contract.”
Hinds, who has ministerial responsibility for the wholly government-owned GPL, had said that the reorganisation would take place in stages as appropriate and convenient to the workers but he did not give a specific timeline. He said the question of when was dependent on the pace of work and funding.
The union had insisted that the staff cut would be union busting, since the same workers might be entitled to contract employment.
“The jobs will not be redundant; those jobs will continue to be there so you cannot make the worker redundant you have to make the job redundant. It will not be done by regular workers it will be done by contract workers,” the union had said.
NAACIE could lose some $1.8 million annually if and when the 250 workers are sent off.
