A Working Class Messiah: GAWU Christmas Message 2009

From various accounts, Christians believe that the Christ Child, born in extra-ordinary poor-people, working-class surroundings, grew up to fill the prophesized role of Messiah.

Messiah, in one sense, refers to a liberator of the oppressed. May the spirit of the Christian Christ Child shine upon the hearts of all rulers, formal and informal authorities and, especially, Guyana’s managers and employers, so that they will see the light and wisdom of treating their workers and the less fortunate much better. Good governments and good employers can indeed become the Messiahs of the masses who are so frequently under stress and strain.

It is against the joyous hope of that beginning which was the Birth, that the Guyana Agricultural and General Workers Union (GAWU) wishes the Christian community, including hundreds of our members, a peaceful, comfortable Christmas season, inclusive of a happier new year 2010. It is quite obvious and often-repeated, how the Festival of Christmas permeates every group in Guyana. Regardless of religion, race, culture or politics, we Guyanese, as a people, are part of this Christian celebration in some manner. Whilst some appreciate and promote the spiritual, religious values and lessons of the commemoration, others use its end-of-year period to renovate, replenish and renew. Homes, work places, schools, everywhere people gather, through decoration, music and sharing, the spirit of celebration in unity is made manifest.

GAWU is acutely aware of the need for Christmas time collective therapy. The global economic challenges along with internal blunders and external threats and abandonment, have combined to make life very rough for the Guyanese worker. By now the travails of bauxite workers and sugar workers will be familiar. GAWU was forced to confront the local sugar bosses on behalf of the sugar workers whose toil provide both significant contributions to the nation’s Gross Domestic Product as well as to certain very super salaries. Our struggle has resulted in some relief and a reasonable Christmas for the sugar sector employees.

During the year, as any perusal of our records will show we have negotiated gains for all of our members in various sectors of economic endeavour in this country. We shall refrain, for this period, and in the Spirit of the Season of Peace and Goodwill, from hostile comments. We hope that good sense prevails next year wherein employers realize that they still need workers’ labour in times of all their own challenges.

May the celebration of the Divine Birth inspire a new re-birth of reasoning and reasonableness in Guyanese society in 2010 and beyond. Jesus, after all, grew up to be a Champion of the poor, unafraid of Empires and working for the down-trodden to all.

A Happy Christmas and a Better New Year.