Dear Editor
I make reference to your report captioned ‘Parvatan, GuySuCo silent over disputed sugar workers’ pay figures’ carried in your January 5 edition, where it is said that in addition to Mr Parvatan, the Chairman of the CoI and the company’s Finance Director refused to comment on GAWU’s claim that the levels of wages and salaries are “grossly exaggerated” in the CoI report. The article also quotes excerpts from the report on the level of sugar workers’ wages. According to the CoI report, harvesters make $2.47m; cane transporters, $2.97m; mechanical tillage workers, $2.91m; field workshop personnel, $2.67m; planters, $1.83m; fertilizers, $1.97m; pest controllers, $1.89m; weeders, $0.871m.
According to the above, the average annual income of every category of sugar worker would be $2.198m, and they are all daily paid workers, not salaried employees, and are only paid when they work, unlike salaried employees who are paid for sick days and casual leave.
The incomes of these categories of worker are affected by the season of the year, that is in crop and out of crop. The in crop (actual sugar production period) accounts for an average 60% of the calendar year and commands 80% of the year’s income, whilst the out of crop which is known for low attendance, low income and a high dropout rate, accounts for, at best, 20% of the year’s income. Even this is an overly conservative estimate.
Taking the above data, the average weekly income, inclusive of wages and bonuses, for a sugar worker in the in-crop period would be $56,400. If the actual daily attendance, which the company has perpetually complained as not being above 5 days per week, is taken into consideration, then the average daily income during the in-crop period would be approximately $11,300 per day. Does the average sugar worker really earn this level of income? With this level of income, GuySuCo should be an employer of choice, so why it is that it is unable to attract and retain labour?
The out-of-crop period, inclusive of the holiday-with-pay week, accounts for 20% of the year’s income, which from the above data would be $21,000 per week. It’s unbelievable that a sugar worker during this period could earn $21,000 per week.
The lowest paid of the above categories are the planters, fertilizers and weeders, and the average annual income for these categories whose incomes are rarely affected by seasonality, since planting, etc, are perennially done, would be approximately $30,000 per week, or an average of 5,000 per day. The average attendance of planters is perpetually low and there is a high incidence of work strikes. The CoI figures are a blatant exaggeration of wages for these categories. The highest paid from the above categories are the cane transport and mechanical tillage workers, whose average annual income would be $2.91m, or an average $75,000 per week during the in-crop period, or $12,500 per day in a 6-day work week. During the out of crop the CoI report asserts that these categories earn almost $30,000 per week in a 5-day workweek. Really?
The most important of all the categories above, undeniably, is the harvesters. The data say that this category would earn $2.47m per year, or $63,700 per week or $12,700 per day (using an attendance of 5 days, which normally is 4½ days per week average) during the in-crop period, and during the out of crop $24,000 per week. It must be noted that less than 40% of the harvesters work during the out of crop. They are simply considered transient workers during this period, seeking employment elsewhere in the fishing, construction and rice industries. It’s an insult to this category, whose job is the most arduous and back-breaking to leverage their income to this astronomical level.
Editor, I conclude by saying that not only are the levels of sugar workers’ wages “grossly exaggerated”, but they are unbelievable.
Yours faithfully,
Rajendra Parmanand
