DDL workers continue to “vent their anger” at company’s proposal

Early yesterday morning, outside the gates of the Demerara Distillers Limited (DDL), East Bank Demerara, a large number of the employees, simply refused to work because they were not in agreement with the company’s decision in their wages increase.

Field Secretary for the Guyana Agricultural and General Workers’ Union (GAWU), Mandat Singh, who was present at yesterday morning’s incident, told Kaieteur News that the “protest” is for the increase in employee’s wages for the year 2010 and that it is already the twelfth month in the year and GAWU has not yet “come to settlement with the company”.

Singh explained that GAWU, the Clerical and Commercial Workers Union (CCW) and Guyana Labour Union (GLU) have been in discussions with the management committee of DDL for the past six months. These discussions centered on the proposal to the company for a 20 per cent across the board increase in wages and salaries.

However, the Unions were told by DDL that the company could not accept an across the board increase of 20 per cent and as such it submitted a counter proposal, including the rationalization of the scales (payment), which would take the minimum wages earned up by over 16 per cent.

Singh said that DDL claimed that “while the new maximum will result in 128 or 20 per cent of the employees being red-circled and therefore nor entitled to salary adjustments, they will nevertheless continue to enjoy their current salaries which are above the maximum of the proposed new scales- in some cases substantially above”.

The GAWU Field Secretary stated that this is “unacceptable” since this is a five-year proposal and within this span almost everyone (about 500 employees) would reach this “new maximum”.

Deodat Ragbeer, one of the workers in yesterday’s incident, stated that the management staff is not included in this agreement since they are being “treated differently”. He said that it is not fair that 128 staff of the company would not be getting any increases for the next five years with the implementation of DDL’s proposal. Each staff works “very hard”.

Other workers told this newspaper that all they want is to “have the increases that everyone worked hard this year for”. They explained that with this idea that DDL is putting forward, employees would not be motivated to continue working at the company, especially if there is one standard payment made to employees after they have reached the “new maximum”.

Mr. Dulai, who is employed in the Warehouse Department, further stated that while the wages increase is the main purpose of the workers ‘refusing to work’, there is also another issue that DDL has not resolved. It is the provision of safety boots for the relevant employees.

Dulai, along with a large number of employees, told Kaieteur News that every year DDL is supposed to provide one pair of safety boots to employees in certain department(s) and it is already the last month of the year, and they are yet to receive these boots.

Kaieteur News was told that contact was made with the Safety Officer of DDL in October and the workers were promised these safety boots by November. When November arrived, they were told by the said officer that they would receive the boots by December.

Now that December is here, they do not know what the company will say next, he added.

Workers who participated in the “protest” belonged to the Distillery, Liquor Sales and Shipping Departments and the Beverages, Old Bottling and New Bottling Plants.

Kaieteur News understands that such an incident has not occurred at DDL within the past 13 years.

When Kaieteur News visited the company for their comment on the matter, the reporter spoke with DDL’s Marketing Manager, Sharda Veeren-Chand, who referred the media operative to Alex Graham, the Public Relations Officer of DDL.

According to a press release sent by Alex Graham last evening, DDL intends to pay its workers their increases before Christmas and that “DDL is concerned over the apparent organised nature of the workers absence since none of the three unions that represent DDL workers gave any indication that the unions were contemplating industrial action. The existing agreement between DDL and the unions require that the unions give the company 72 hours notice before taking industrial action.”

“Management has been in discussions with the unions for the past six months, regarding their demand for a 20 per cent across the board increase in wages and salaries, and those meetings continued up to this morning.

“We made it clear to the union that we could not accept an across the board increase of 20% and we submitted a counter proposal including the rationalisation of the scales which takes the minimum wages earned up by over 16 per cent.”

The company claimed to have invited the unions to work on the implementation of the agreement in order that there would be equitable remuneration for all workers going forward.

GAWU’s Field Secretary, Mandat Singh, told Kaieteur News that if there is no agreement between DDL and the Unions soon, the “protest” will continue on Monday.