GEORGETOWN, Guyana (AFX) - Thousands of workers on Guyana's sugar cane estates were on strike for a second day on Wednesday to press the state-owned industry for pay increases, a union leader said.
Roughly 14,000 sugar workers belonging to Guyana's most powerful labor union have vacated cane fields and factories to demand automatic wage hikes to compensate for cost of living increases when a value-added tax of 16 percent begins in January, said Komal Chand, general-secretary of the Guyana Agricultural Workers Union.
Chand said the union will end the two-day strike later Wednesday to give the Guyana Sugar Corporation a chance to resolve the pay dispute between workers and management in the key sector.
'We are to resume our strike if we fail to reach agreement,' he said.
Industry spokesman Jairam Petam said there has never been an agreement for the automatic wage hikes the union is asking for to compensate for new tax structures. He would not comment on negotiations.
Guyana's revenue authority said it will eliminate a 10 percent hotel levy, a 15 percent charge on travel tickets, and all consumption taxes on imported items to compensate for the flat VAT tax of 16 percent for all goods and services starting Jan 1.
The strike comes amid hard times for the region's sugar industry. Earlier this year, in response to pressure from the World Trade Organization, the European Union imposed a 36-percent cut in its sugar subsidy system, which had artificially kept prices higher than world market levels.
For years, the EU gave former colonies in the Caribbean, Africa and the Pacific preferential access to its markets and paid high prices to encourage development.
Earnings from sugar exports supply a significant portion of the foreign exchange for Guyana, a nation of 767,000 on the north shoulder of South America. The sugar industry is the former British colony's largest employer.
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