On Labor Day, President of the Guyana Agricultural and General Workers’ Union, Mr. Seepaul Narine, was in ripping form. “Because you have given so much, you deserve to share fully in the wealth you have created. That is the heart of our message today. Not as a favour. Not as a charity, but as a right.” I salute veteran labor organizer and union leader, Mr. Narine. But on one condition only. His heart is in what he said. I will tell Mr. Narine and Guyana, why that condition is attached.
Personally speaking, Seepaul Narine is too close to the ruling PPP Government, too intimate with PPP leadership. It is his right to choose his friends, enjoy his politics. My concern is that when such is the case, how earnestly, how consistently, and how sharply he can speak for workers’ rights and conditions. What goes for Mr. Narine goes for all labor leaders. Narine is a survivor of the barren labor years, where every scrap, every inch, contested became a state of war. At least, it was so for his constituency, sugar workers. A man who struggled so long against domineering political leaders should know, be on guard, against new political leaders, who have accumulated even more power and control in their hands.
It inspires that he could summon the courage, the clarity of conscience, to speak of “wealth…not as a favor, not as a charity, but as a right.” Thanks, Mr. Narine for speaking in my voice. I trust that his heart is set right: not speaking for the sake of speaking. Nor speaking with soaring, galvanizing rhetorical power on Labor Day just for the record. But that he will fight tooth and talon against insulting wage increases. He is truly against the degradation of Guyanese workers having to depend on cash grant pittances. And he is sufficiently agitated over politicians bouncing around workers from every sector, as though mere pawns subject to their schemes and callous indifference.
In fairness to President Narine, I shall separate him from those who test the winds, taste its ingredients, and decide that these words and posture are what best suit time and environment. That is, the hour is heathy to raise a ruckus about rising price levels for food, transportation, utilities, and other basics of Guyanese living. Because such sell well; make speakers sound honest, look good. It warms that Narine genuinely recognizes those assaults on the dignity of local life, what erodes it to the bone. It is great that he has added his voice on Labor Day to the calls for something to be done about the national minimum wage, since rising prices are such a burden on the backs of Guyanese workers and their families. When a worker comes up short with paying regular bills, then it could be that the value of labor has been cheapened to the point of inducing poverty and bankruptcy. Or that the great many new jobs generated by the nation’s oil wealth must be menial in title, and menial in the weight of the pay packet collected.
The constant wail of Guyanese workers below certain points in the nation’s economic pyramid is of prices racing away from them. Mr. Seepaul’s friends’ response can be summarized in how many roads they built, how many subsidies they delivered, and how much they are preparing for the next century. As famed economist John Kenneth Galbraith once said, ‘by then everyone would be dead.’ In the context of today, I would be the last person to give short thrift to the representations of ruling politicians of how much they care. I will be the first to say, though, that those are not enough, fail to lift, carry. How does a Guyanese worker and family live on $60,000 a month, or $100,000? Where is their dignity when their bills are constantly backlogged?
Seepaul Narine knows this. It delights that he spoke clearly to truth. Labor Day didn’t end his labors. The good fight, that hard fight, has just begun.
