Sugar workers get five per cent wage increase

TIMES INT'L

By Samuel Sukhnandan

GAWU President Komal Chand

Sugar workers will receive a five per cent across-the-board increase on their salaries, after the Guyana Agriculture and General Workers Union (GAWU) and the Guyana Sugar Corporation (GuySuCo) sealed a wage increase deal.
GAWU President Komal Chand told Guyana Times International on Tuesday that the union is pleased with the increase given to sugar workers.
Several bilateral meetings were held during the course of the year, before the decision on a suitable increase was made. Chand said piece-rated workers will receive a five per cent increase, while time-rated workers will receive one per cent.
The time-rated workers are already benefiting from an adjustment in their rates of pay on November 4, arising from a job evaluation exercise done by GAWU and GuySuCo.
“The time-rated workers got an increase in their pay by an average of 34 per cent and somewhat less than 34 per cent against the factor that they had a significant adjustment in their rates of pay,” Chand said. Both increases are retroactive to January 1, 2012, and the back pay will be released next month.

Improvement
“What is more important is that cane-cutters had an improvement  in their incentives, in addition to their incentive payment which is paid after they would have achieved a certain level of production,” Chand posited.
He told this newspaper that against this backdrop and the current financial issues the corporation is facing, the union is satisfied with the increase.
He noted that GuySuCo, which is  already in a poor financial state, indicated to GAWU that if it were to make the revised target of 241,000 tonnes of sugar, then the deficit would be slightly above Gy$500 million.
He, therefore, believes that all workers being represented by GAWU should be satisfied with the increase.

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