It took its own time coming but the operations of the Bauxite Company of Guyana Inc (BCGI) in which the Russian Aluminium giant RUSAL is the majority shareholder will finally come under close scrutiny in an arbitration exercise ordered by the Ministry of Labour.
The first thing that should be said about the BCGI arbitration is that it appears to reflect a belated concession on the part of the government – a 10 per cent shareholder in BCGI – that the incidents that have occurred at BCGI’s operations at Aroaima and Kwakwani, most of which have had to do with union and worker allegations of the lack of concern by the company’s Russian management for the country’s industrial relations must now be properly investigated and dealt with.
During Manzoor Nadir’s tenure as Minister of Labour there was much evidence of indifference on the part of the government to mashing RUSAL’s corns by making firm pronouncements on incidents like the allegations of threats of violence against local workers by the company’s General Manager. It took the arrival of a RUSAL team to have that issue dealt with and even after they had come and gone both the workers and the union made it clear that they were not satisfied with the manner in which the matter was handled. Prime Minister Samuel Hinds too, long an important public official in the country’s mining sector has never really shown any inclination to engage RUSAL on its treatment of workers.
There are other issues too like BCGI’s threat some time ago to derecognize the Guyana Bauxite and General Workers’ Union (GB&GWU) the bargaining agent for the company’s workers, numerous health and safety concerns and what workers at Kwakwai say is the application of a certain arbitrariness in dealing with contracts of employment.
The fact that the new Minister of Labour Dr Nanda Gopaul has now announced the government’s endorsement of arbitration suggests that the administration may now be prepared to bite the bullet and stand up to RUSAL more than it has done in the past.
Interestingly enough, the move to arbitration here in Guyana has coincided with what appears to be a much bigger crisis inside RUSAL that has led to the resignation of its billionaire Russian Chairman Viktor Vekeselbery. Some of the issues that have allegedly triggered the resignation include RUSAL’s debt-ridden condition, controversy at the top over the manner in which the debt should be liquidated and what the former Board Chairman himself has described as the company’s social and human resources policies.
Another issue that has surfaced within the context of RUSAL’s internal crisis is that matter of whether or not restructuring efforts should not see the company focusing more on its substantive pursuit of producing aluminium which of course is another way of saying that it might wish to reexamine its role in bauxite production.
It is of course too early to determine what the implications of RUSAL’s crisis might be for its bauxite-mining operations in Guyana. That having been said the likely future of the BCGI is not a matter that either the Government of Guyana or the company’s workers can ignore. It is not, perhaps, beyond the realm of possibility that the outcome of RUSAL’s current boardroom crisis might have implications for the operations of the company here.
It is adding that the move to arbitration in Guyana is perhaps a lifeline for the jaded GB&GWU whose star as a mining union appears to have pitched in the wake of the closure of Omai Gold Mines Ltd. Indeed, arbitration can be regarded as an accomplishment on the part of BCGI’s workers in the face of what we are told has been the obduracy of the RUSAL officials and with very less than required logistical support from the GB&GWU.
Now that the arbitration process has begun the union appears to be fully engaged, recognizing as its General Secretary Lincoln Lewis told this newspaper that the outcome may well set a precedent for the posture of current and future investors in the mining sector – gold, bauxite or manganese – to the treatment of the country’s workers and to the country’s labour laws.
