Albion Estate workers down tools

The Guyana Agricultural and General Workers Union (GAWU) says workers of all the gangs of Albion Estate have downed tools, severely affecting operations at the Estate on the first scheduled day of harvesting of the canes of the second crop.

“The workers are calling on the Guyana Sugar Corporation Inc. (GuySuCo) to address an increase in pay.

“It cannot be forgotten that sugar workers wages have been frozen since 2015. The naked discrimination against this hardworking group of the state’s employees manifested through denials of pay increases and attacks on other long standing benefits and conditions coupled with an ever rising tax burden, among the other hardships of contemporary Guyanese life, have severely eroded the workers and their families purchasing power and by extension, their standard of living,” GAWU said in a statement Friday.

According to GAWU, the workers also are peeved over the arbitrary hiking of the Estate’s weekly production targets.

“They contend that the increase in the Estate’s targets from 2,100 tonnes sugar to 2,140 would be disadvantageous and will prevent the estate from realizing the target and thus affecting incentives arising on the attainment of the target.

“The workers argue, quite correctly, that the inability to achieve target through the arbitrary increase could well daunt their commitment and belie the notion of the incentive in the first place.”

Additionally, workers engaged in the mechanical loading of canes are upset regarding what they believe is an unnecessary change in their hours of work.

“The bell loaders operators as they are known would usually work from 06:00h to 18:00h during the cropping period, however, the Corporation, without rhyme or reason and in ignorance of the workers concerns, are requiring the workers in question to work from 10:00h to 22:00h.”

Another issue relates to workers engaged in the Mechanical Tillage tasks who have y disagreed with the arbitrary downward adjustments of their pay rates pertaining to certain tasks.

“The Union is awaiting a meeting with the Industrial Relations Department of GuySuCo to address the matter.”