I once had cursory, oblique relationships with the Guyana Teachers Association/Union and the Guyana Public Service Union. At one time or the other I was an actual paid-up member and even made little contributions to the work and image of the two representative bodies. That’s all history now.

Even before those periods, I had studied, in Teachers College especially, much of the bitter-sweet history of sugar in Guyana and the Caribbean. In a word, that history encompasses the story of the development and evolution of our societies – their make-up, economies and peoples. Most of us, probably, are here because of sugar.

When I grew into one career as “a government official” in the late seventies and into the eighties, I felt for the union that should have been the legitimate successor to the Man Power Citizens Association (MPCA), eventually a company–union which received American funding for non-industrial political programmes. Of course, the paternalistic overwhelming role of the colonial “Bookers Guiana” and succeeding Sugar Producers Association shaped the developing Guyana for those who were the thousands in the industry and their dependents. And all who depended on the economy. Meaning all of us.

No need to dwell now on the misery sugar bred for our forefathers right now. It remains pivotal to the sustainability of our economy. Until or unless we discover oil or produce much more gold and diamonds. Our sugar industry is now under serious threat from organisations and circumstances outside of Guyana. And misunderstanding at home, amongst the sector’s rank-and-file and agendas by political oppositionists don’t really assist with the strategic plan crafted by Guysuco to face the challenges being posed to the sector’s survival. I’ll spare readers the statistics available. (I have access to lots.) Suffice to say that plans are afoot to make our industry survive. Jamaica, Cuba, Trinidad and Barbados are not as certain.

********************************

The workers reps

Cheddi Jagan made his vow to dedicate all the remaining years of his life – after 1948 – to the causes of the working-class in this country. He died doing just that nearly fifty years later.

Burnished in the oven of industrial strikes and openly political struggles against the Burnham governments, the Guyana Agricultural and General Workers Union which Jagan inspired was left to represent the vast majority of the nation’s sugar workers. GAWU’s political affiliation was obvious in the days when other unions were made to be formally affiliated to the ruling party of the day. But that is the reason I mentioned GPSU in my opening paragraph. If you study the GPSU’s reach you’ll discover that it represents workers in vital sectors of the economy – Public Servants, Geologists, MMA Agricul-turists, State Lawyers, Aviators, Bankers and others. In 1999 the GPSU proved that Georgetown was indeed Guyana when, aided and abetted by the Sophia Strategists, they closed the place down.

Now study GAWU. It is still the largest union in the region! It represents our crucial sugar workers, rice employees, workers in the marine sector, forestry and distillery workers. You have an idea of which are really the “powerful” unions in this under-privileged society and economy. In the face of intermittent challenges to GAWU’s status and representation – and the current Wales issue – I asked the union’s top brass to comment. Expectedly, they regaled me with their recorded successes over the years.

You can’t argue with GAWU’s achievements on behalf of its sugar worker-members. The records from Guysuco are there to show. The problem is – not unlike the situation with the PPP/C government and its employees – these gains, especially monetary increases, are always swiftly minimised by inflation and other economic incentive-eaters. But GAWU’s monthly and annual incentives gained, increased salaries and wages, have frequently made them the envy of other unions which claim that GAWU is somebody’s favourite. Guysuco, however, complains quietly of the corporation’s employment costs – US 10 cents pound of sugar, out of the unfortunate 17 cents (US) it takes to produce a pound of sugar here right now. Nowhere else in the region is this rate so high. Guysuco’s employment costs could be said to be GAWU’s gain.

*******************************

GAWU’s credible critics

I asked the GAWU people to comment on claims made, from time to time, by at least three well-known, prominent critics with some credibility. They were reluctant to “waste the union’s time,” they said. Success breeds its own enemies, they claimed. But I insisted.

The GAWU men brushed aside comments by a (rival) union leader. They reiterated the “mischief”, the “political ambitions” of one articulate small party leader. But they spared me comments on a television critic who has some association with sugar. They told me I should write that that person has himself been nominated by the Opposition PNC to the Board of Guysuco. Is that political, I added. They said I should ask the same commentator why private sugar workers, on the family’s private estate are getting only 2 1/2% increases this year, as against what an Arbitration Tribunal awarded GAWU’s members for two years.

I told them I was quite scared of this man’s pens and programmes so I wouldn’t write or ask these things. However, I congratulated GAWU for its successful credit union – probably the best around, apart from the army’s. Their academic programmes and ability to rise from the ashes of their Regent Street headquarters and to attract international backing, as the GPSU does. I wish for industrial peace. And political “engagement”. Constructively.

******************************

So long…

1) Refreshing! An editorial in the Stabroek earlier this week lauded – actually was impressed with – a Minister of Government, Mr Shaik Baksh. For his responses to letter writers’ concerns. Wow!

2) Next week: The Comfort Zone of a US visa.

3) What!? They don’t want to tell me about the chickens from Buxton? Next week too.

(4) Beautiful piece by Godfrey Chin on the old-time Palm Court in Georgetown. On the supposedly last-last night this past Wednesday evening, I was taken there by a “regular”. The Middle-Class-or what’s left of it – was there. The sporting pols from major parties, the diplomats, the business fellows and the “marginal” – like me – were all there. One fellow said it was a wake. The tears were mostly in glasses and bottles, though.

That’s why I have this gut feeling that we’ve not seen the “final end” of this famous nightspot. Check me in four months.

(5) Please, I appeal, hold back, Christmas a bit this year, GBC, TV etc. Thanks.

`Til next week!