Albion strike
Poor turnout at work resumption
Stabroek News
February 12, 2004
Poor turnout on the first day of resumption of work after a week-long strike by field workers at the Albion Sugar Estate slowed production at the factory yesterday.
On Tuesday, the Guyana Agricultural and General Workers' Union (GAWU) and the Guyana Sugar Corpora-tion (Guysuco) agreed, in the presence of Chief Labour Officer Mohamed Akeel, that striking workers would re-sume duty yesterday. How-ever, only an estimated ten per cent of the field workers turned out to work yesterday, according to Guysuco Industrial Relations Director, Jairam Petam. Petam added that the factory workers were not really required to work yesterday but they still reported for duty.
Petam told Stabroek News yesterday that the situation at the estate was normal. On Monday, the workers stoned General Manager Aaron Dukhia, while he was briefing them during a meeting and burned tyres on the public road as their protest over an increase in their weekly production target turned nasty.
Dukhia was standing at the back of a Land Rover addressing the workers when stones were hurled at him, some hitting him on his head. He suffered abrasions to his forehead and other parts of his body, but received medical attention and went back to work.
The strike was eventually called off on Tuesday morning but some workers who apparently did not know this continued to protest.
The strike by the workers at Albion began on January 31 following an announcement by management of an increase in the weekly production target by ten tonnes from 2,165 to 2,175. This was reduced the next day by five tonnes and on Monday by eight. It was later lowered by nine tonnes, which resulted in the strike being called off.
Petam said the attendance yesterday was grossly insufficient to complete the task at hand. He told Stabroek News that the striking field workers, especially the cane harvesters, were expected to harvest 12 days of stale canes which were left over due to the strike. Petam is optimistic that there will be a much improved turnout today.
He said Guysuco's priority now will no longer be for the cane cutters to harvest the stale canes but will focus on burning fresh canes to be ground and crushed this week. He said the stale canes would be harvested at a later date.
The Albion factory was virtually shut down for the past 12 days. The workers said they were opposed to the increase in the target since it could have resulted in them losing their weekly production incentive.
But Petam had argued that an increase in the target was usually influenced by three factors: cane yields, performance of the factory and the quality of cane produced. He said the increase could be based solely on one of these factors or sometimes all three. He noted that in the case of Albion all three factors were favourable, adding that the cane yield improved significantly last year. Petam was also adamant that the revised target is achievable noting that in a normal grinding week Albion would surpass that target. He said too that for last year the estate's weekly production average for the first crop was 2,419 metric tonnes, while for the second crop it was 2,232 metric tonnes.