With sev­er­al labour-sup­ply com­pa­nies in Guyana’s oil and gas sec­tor be­ing ac­cused of skirt­ing labour leg­is­la­tion, the Guyana Agri­cul­tur­al and Gen­er­al Work­ers’ Union (GAWU) is part­ner­ing with the Oil­fields Work­ers’ Trade Union (OW­TU) to strength­en work­ers' rights in the sis­ter CARI­COM na­tion.

OW­TU pres­i­dent gen­er­al An­cel Ro­get and GAWU pres­i­dent Seep­aul Nar­ine signed a Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing at Para­mount Build­ing, San Fer­nan­do, yes­ter­day. It is an agree­ment for the unions to col­lab­o­rate on poli­cies on col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing, health and safe­ty and oth­er in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions is­sues as GAWU seeks to rep­re­sent work­ers in the oil and gas com­pa­nies. Ro­get said both unions be­lieve work­ers must be cen­tral to na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment. With Guyana’s oil and gas in­dus­try in its in­fant stage, he said it was im­por­tant for cit­i­zens of that coun­try. He said T&T’s de­vel­op­ment was pos­si­ble through work­ers' con­tri­bu­tion to the oil and gas sec­tor. There­fore, the OW­TU will give its over­whelm­ing sup­port to GAWU to en­sure work­ers ben­e­fit from the coun­try’s wealth. It will al­so share its ex­pe­ri­ences deal­ing with multi­na­tion­al com­pa­nies who, ac­cord­ing to Ro­get, if left unchecked, would leave cit­i­zens poor af­ter ex­tract­ing re­sources and wealth from the land and repa­tri­at­ing them. 

“That is the ex­pe­ri­ence we do not want to be­fall our Guyana broth­ers and sis­ters, that all the wealth would have been ex­tract­ed and the Guyanese peo­ple would be no bet­ter. That is why we want to share our ex­pe­ri­ence with those com­rades to en­sure in the quick­est pos­si­ble time they get the ben­e­fits of that very im­por­tant sec­tor,” Ro­get said.

The OW­TU said does not want these com­pa­nies on­ly pro­vid­ing me­nial work for Guyanese cit­i­zens while ex­pa­tri­ates get all the high-earn­ing jobs. Guyanese must have lead­er­ship roles in the in­dus­try for the coun­try to have some in­de­pen­dence over its re­sources.

Nar­ine said the re­la­tion­ship be­tween GAWU and OW­TU dates back sev­er­al decades, re­call­ing that T&T work­ers as­sist­ed the Guyana sug­ar work­ers' strike in 1977 by re­fus­ing to han­dle ship­ments go­ing to Guyana un­til a res­o­lu­tion of the is­sue. Nar­ine said GAWU re­alised the rapid de­vel­op­ment of Guyana's oil and gas in­dus­try and that many com­pa­nies sup­ply­ing labour were not treat­ing work­ers fair­ly. These com­pa­nies de­ny work­ers per­son­al pro­tec­tive equip­ment, over­time pay­ments, an­nu­al leave and oth­er le­gal ben­e­fits. There­fore, he said GAWU need­ed to step up its rep­re­sen­ta­tion of work­ers.

“We recog­nise that we are not ful­ly knowl­edge­able of the is­sue in this sec­tor, and the peo­ple who are the ones who are knowl­edge­able are the OW­TU. They have been do­ing that busi­ness for 85 years as a union, and we recog­nise from their his­to­ry when the union was first rep­re­sent­ing the work­ers in Trinidad & To­ba­go, they had the same prob­lems we are fac­ing now,” Nar­ine said.

While one com­pa­ny in­clud­ed a con­tract clause pro­hibit­ing work­ers from join­ing a trade union, the Guyanese Min­istry of Labour in­struct­ed it to re­move the clause as the law al­lows all work­ers ac­cess to union rep­re­sen­ta­tion. How­ev­er, with­out a 40 per cent mem­ber­ship in the com­pa­nies, GAWU is not a cer­ti­fied ma­jor­i­ty union that com­pa­nies are bound to ne­go­ti­ate. GAWU cur­rent­ly us­es con­cil­i­a­tion at the Min­istry of Labour to rec­ti­fy work­place is­sues, but Nar­ine said union­ism is the an­swer. There­fore, GAWU is cam­paign­ing to show work­ers the im­por­tance of join­ing a trade union.

The OW­TU lost sig­nif­i­cant mem­ber­ship with the De­cem­ber 2018 clo­sure of Petrotrin, leav­ing work­ers in the new­ly formed Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Co Ltd and Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um Co Ltd and oth­ers with­out a rep­re­sent­ing union. How­ev­er, Ro­get said plans are afoot to en­sure work­er rep­re­sen­ta­tion.

He said the OW­TU does not want more lives lost be­cause of the ab­sence of a trade union like last Feb­ru­ary when LCMS divers Fyzal Kur­ban, Yusuf Hen­ry, Rishi Na­gas­sar and Kazım Ali Jr died in­side a 36-inch pipeline at Paria’s off­shore fa­cil­i­ty.

“Four work­ers died in that com­pa­ny be­cause those who were in the man­age­ment and who are still in the man­age­ment, their on­ly qual­i­fi­ca­tion to be there is that they are friends of the gov­ern­ment and friends of the Prime Min­is­ter. Sec­ond­ly, of course, be­cause there was no union to point out the right to those work­ers.”