GAWU’s Strike and the Politics of Sugar

guyana chrobicle editorial

November 1, 2015

THE Guyana Agricultural and General Workers Union (GAWU) which represents the nation’s sugar workers mounted a three-day strike this past week. The union claimed the strike was called to protest the delay in the annual wage talks with the Guyana Sugar Corporation (GUYSUCO). According to GAWU, it has engaged in these talks around this time of the year for the past 26 years and expressed frustration that they have not been held yet. GuySuCo and the government have said that the talks are being delayed until they receive the report from the Commission of Inquiry (CoI) that was set up by government to look into the state of the industry. The Minister of Agriculture charged GAWU with mounting a political strike on the urging of the opposition PPP. The union has since given GuySuCo a week to put arrangements in place for the talks and has not ruled out further strike action if the deadline is not met. It is now common knowledge that the sugar industry is bankrupt. It has been kept afloat by hefty government subsidies over the years, while frequently failing to meet production targets. Last year, the then PPP government pumped $6 billion into the industry. As Professor Thomas opined, the industry has been spending more to produce less. The cost of production of one pound of sugar is three times more the average price per pound on the world market. No doubt, the industry has accumulated a significant debt which Professor Clive Thomas estimates to be $82 billion. When the new government took power in May of this year, it inherited a broken industry. Within days of taking office, it was revealed that the company was so broke it could not pay workers’ wages. A sum of $16 billion was requested and the government promptly responded with a $4 billion bail-out package. The president pledged to do everything in his power to keep sugar alive. A further $3.8 billion was allocated by government in the truncated 2015 budget. The CoI was set up by the government to determine the true state of the industry and presumably to make recommendations on the way forward. A new board was named with Professor Thomas, our foremost expert on the economics of sugar, as chairman. These were clear signals that the new government was serious about sugar. The Minister of Agriculture recently opined that despite the woes in the industry, sugar workers are among the most highly paid workers in the country. He also disclosed that the company has been meeting its targets over the last few weeks. Bearing the above in mind, it is very strange that GAWU would call the workers out on strike. The government has bent over backwards to ensure that the industry survives. It has not refused to negotiate with the workers; it is waiting on the findings of the CoI to determine the framework for the wage talks. That makes eminent sense. But GAWU, which has a representative on the CoI, cannot wait; it gives the false impression that the government does not mean well. On the other hand, the government has been criticised by the Guyana Trades Union Congress (GTUC) for showing a bias towards the concerns of sugar workers over those of other categories of workers, including bauxite workers and public servants. Embedded in the GTUC’s observation is the political element; sugar workers are the core constituency of the PPP, while the latter categories support the governing parties. There is a lot of merit in the minister’s political labelling of the recent strike. If by political strikes we mean the use of a party’s influence over trade unions as a partisan weapon against its opponents, then political strikes are a fact of life in Guyana. During the long tenure of the PNC 1964-92 government, GAWU, which is an arm of the PPP and whose leaders have always sat in the highest councils of the party, openly used strike action to further the objectives of the then opposition PPP. Although the relationship between party and union is not as structurally cemented and the frequency of strike action has been less, one can make a similar argument for the public-sector unions during the PPP’s tenure. The argument here is that the line between industrial and political strikes is very thin, if it exists at all. We are, therefore, in for a rough period ahead as far as sugar is concerned. The PPP has made it clear that it does not intend to cooperate with the government and it has showed its hand as far as the use of its clout among sugar workers is concerned. The government, on the other hand, would have to make some tough choices as far as the sustenance of the industry is concerned. Getting rid of sugar totally, or even partly, is clearly not a political choice, even if it makes some economic sense. But the status quo cannot be preserved in its entirety. The challenge for the government is that any significant changes would have to have the confidence and cooperation of GAWU/PPP.