Sugar workers from the LBI and Enmore estates yesterday took strike action as they continued to protest the merging of the two entities.
The workers assembled in front of the Enmore facility from 6 am and left around 9 am, hoping that their cries would be heard as they have so far felt ignored.
Rampersaud Prasad, Field Secretary with the Guyana Agricultural and General Workers Union (GAWU), told Stabroek News that they are open to dialogue but it seems as though no one from GuySuCo is willing to speak to them.
He wrote a letter to the manager of the LBI Estate, Corbet Victorine, asking for a meeting with him and the other workers but has gotten no response.
After it seemed as though Victorine had refused to speak to them, the GAWU representatives called a meeting on Saturday and decided to organise the strike.
“Before the start of the crop they would have a pre-crop brief but we decided to boycott it yesterday. We told him [manager] that the workers would not be able to attend because they have other engagements,” Prasad explained.
The LBI workers came out in full force, while 75% of the workers from the Enmore estate turned out.
They carried placards which read: “Management disrespectful to cane-cutters,” “Estate manager refuse to meet representatives,” “We demand that the estate manager meet us,” “We need to discuss LBI cutters coming to work at Enmore,” and “Collective bargaining is a right.”
Prasad said they plan to make the strike bigger when the crop starts, if there is still no response from management.
Meanwhile, 25 field foremen received severance pay last Friday and have started to look for jobs. Fifteen other workers, who have opted to be severed, said that they would hopefully be paid when GuySuCo “generates resources from the crop.”
During another protest last week, the cane-harvesters told this newspaper, “GuySuCo bringing on greater hardships on workers. We prefer to continue cutting cane at LBI and when there is cane to cut at Enmore we would go there.”
Some of the cane-cutters had told Stabroek News that they have already started out at Enmore to weed and plant cane and that while they were receiving $3,300 per day at LBI, they were only paid $2,700 at Enmore.
“We want to remain as LBI workers, so we can receive our basic [pay] of $3,300.
When we go and work over there [Enmore], they would give us three days tasks for one day’s pay because we can’t finish it. That is too much pressure,” one of them told this newspaper.
