The Guyana Sugar Corporation (GuySuCo) yesterday announced that the immediate cessation of all operations except essential services at the Blairmont Estate, West Coast Berbice, after workers went on strike to press demands over payments.
As a result of the disruption of its operations since Friday, GuySuCo said it had already lost $13M loss in revenue, and it is considering applying appropriate sanctions against the respective employees.
GuySuCo, in a press release, said that it “cannot condone such reckless behaviour on the part of the workers,” and therefore “it will meet with the union to discuss the gravity of the disruption caused by employees abandoning their jobs and the application of the appropriate sanctions.”
According to GuySuCo, the strike at Blairmont “is in blatant violation of the grievance procedure that provides, among others, for dialogue at various levels until a dispute or grievance is resolved, rather than for workers proceeding to abandon their jobs, thereby causing 485 punts of cane to perish and denial of work to 850 harvesters for two days already.”
Last Friday, the 2-10 pm shift downed tools at about 4.30 pm when the factory was in full operation, demanding that “all income generated from doing piece work be used in the computation of retroactive payment following the job evaluation.”
They also are demanding that “those workers who are not satisfied with their current pay grades must have their grades adjusted to satisfy their demand,” and “all outstanding payments that have been delayed by queries are to be paid without any further delay.”
According to GuySuCo, immediately prior to the workers walking off the job last Friday, management advised the union representatives and workers in the factory compound that all outstanding payments will be made on Friday, August 31, and that the other two issues are within the purview of discussion between the union and the corporation, in accordance with the grievance procedure.
However, the workers still walked off the job during the shift and the incoming 10-6 pm shift joined the strike.
Operations were normal on all shifts on Saturday and Sunday but on Monday, the 6-2 am shift in the factory and the entire workforce in the field workshop struck on the same demands made on Friday.
The release stated that a meeting between senior corporate management and executives of the union was subsequently held late Monday afternoon at Blairmont.
At that meeting an agreement was reached for immediate cessation of the strike, and for a full resumption on the 10-6 pm shift and onwards.
Unfortunately, however, GuySuCo said workers on the 10-6 pm shift Monday, and the 6-2 am shift and the entire workforce in the field workshop yesterday continued the strike, despite an agreement being reached Monday.
In the meantime, it added, as a result of the strike 400 punts of cane have been filled in punts for the past three days and remain in the dock, rapidly deteriorating in quality. Consequently, GuySuCo said, not only has sugar been lost, but harvesters were not required for work for last Saturday, yesterday and today because of the unavailability of empty punts.
In addition, the corporation said, “there are 85 punts of cane harvested and left in the fields and at this stage the deterioration in the cane quality has resulted in sugar loss of 100 tonnes that could have yielded $13M in revenue.”
