The Union of Drivers Workers of Applications of Uruguay (Uctradu) complained about the job insecurity and asked the Municipality of Montevideo (IM) that the companies no longer integrate the negotiating tables. So he said this Friday to The Observer the president of the union, Daniel Martínez, who affirmed that the modifications that the commune wants to impose on the regulations, will “benefit” applications.
“Those who have to leave things in order are the administration and us. That the administration and us participate in the tables. We are the protagonists. The platform is a no-brainer. If one platform leaves (from the market), the other may remain,” said Martínez. And he said the workers will raise “whatever it takes.” “We understand that we are right (with the proposals),” he said.
For more than nine months, Uber, Cabify, the drivers and the IM have been negotiating an exit from the transition regime of the system that has been in force since 2019. However, the drivers’ disagreement grows every time the parties sit down to negotiate. But that term expired, and the administration sent a draft decree to the Departmental Board to make some terms more flexible in the regulations approved at the time by the administration of Daniel Martínez.
The workers’ union met with the president of the Departmental Board of Montevideo, Sofía Espillar, to explain their proposals. The meeting will be held again in the coming days, as several delegations will be received, in order to address the issue, from all parties involved. Even, according to El Observador, the taxi union -Suatt- and the National Union of Workers and Transport Workers (Unott) will participate.
In this sense, Uctradu understands that its proposals do not take place in practice, and that the capital commune then negotiates separately. “The tripartite tables were useless (…) They talk later, when we leave,” claimed the leader.
“This activity is increasingly precarious. The mayor’s directors have failed”, insisted Martínez, who explained that “a big problem” is that of the rates, and the costs for the workers. “Either the IM or the Executive Power must set the rates, and prevent Uber from continuing to make precarious and speculating with rates that are not fair,” he added.
On the other hand, it states that the payment of the canon must be an obligation of the platforms, and, in this sense, the union requests a modification of the municipal digest. Also, Uctradu made a written proposal, in view of the “problem of permits”. “That all the colleagues that Uber has dismissed be reinstated, that (the situation) be readjusted with those who may be left without a job,” Martínez said. And he added that about a hundred people lost their jobs after the two previous modifications, made by the IM, about the regulation.
“We have been told: we are going to listen but we are going to decide for ourselves. And every time they have decided, they have decided wrong”, criticized Martínez, about the authorities of the administration. “(The IM), by not siding with the workers because of the rates, makes them have to work long hours. With controls that are being carried out. The platforms are not complying with the regulations. Uber does not comply. What you have to do is order a new work system, a new decree that is equal for all”, he pointed out.
