The industries of the dairy sector will analyze a proposal to solve the union conflict in the sector late this Tuesday afternoon.
The proposal was generated by the negotiators for the Chamber of the Dairy Industry of Uruguay (CILU), after a tripartite meetingin which the Federation of Dairy Industry Workers (FTIL) and the Ministry of Labor and Social Security (MTSS) also participated.
This proposal is currently being considered internally by the CILU..
From the FTIL it was indicated to The Observer that a communication from the CILU to the rest of those involved in the negotiation is awaitedwhich would happen this Wednesday in a new scheduled meeting (at 12:30).
In the event that the CILU does not transfer a specific proposal, the union will carry out a strike at the level of the entire industryof one or two hours per worker, and also soon a general strike of 24 hours, informed The Observer Luis Goichea, member of the FTIL.
Camilo Dos Santos
The FTIL, CILU and the Ministry of Labor held a tripartite meeting on Tuesday.
CILU sources told The Observer that the chamber studies whether it is feasible to present a proposal that although “it has to do with everything”, more than anything it considers the peace clauseone of the main issues over which this conflict has spread – it has been going on for more than six months now.
The companies did not advance what the proposal is about, but they maintained that It has to do with the relaxation of the peace clause.
This Tuesday in the MTSS the companies and the workers’ federation met again. The meeting lasted more than three hours, at first “it seemed that the meeting was going to be frustrated and that there was going to be no agreement,” Goichea said. The workers told the MTSS that they had already given “their maximum effort” and that if they did not reach an agreement they had measures already thought out to apply.
The extension of the conflict recently generated rumors about a possible sale of Conaprole, an alternative about which the tamberos expressed themselvesbut also union members.
Cooperatives spoke out
The dairy conflict was one of the topics discussed at the Annual Assembly of the Federated Agrarian Cooperatives (CAF), which took place this Tuesday in Montevideo. Pablo Perdomo, president of the union, expressed full support for dairy farmers who have been affected in the context of this problem between companies and workers.
One of CAF’s partner companies is Conaprole, a member of the CILU and which has been directly affected by this conflict.
✅ “We value the support of the Executive Power to the productive sector, key in an agro-exporting country. On July 6, the President of the Republic @LuisLacallePou received us in the Executive Tower”.
Pablo Perdomo, president of CAF pic.twitter.com/5y42ukTHHu
— CAF (@CAFUruguay) July 26, 2022
“The conflict brings shortages in the local market and brings multiple damagesbecause it affects consumers, grocers, distributors, milk producers and the hundreds of workers in cooperatives,” he said and maintained that this is one of the two major conflicts in recent months that have affected agrarian cooperatives, the other was that of the supergas sector, which in some cases prevented the drying of grains for export.
“Who will take care of what is lost?” asked Pablo Perdomo, president of CAF.
For his part, the president of the National Institute of Cooperatives (Inacoop), Martín Fernández, added that for many years the sector worked with low profitability, “and in the most difficult times for the dairy industry there was not a single wage cut for industry workers, because the weight of that difficult moment fell on the producers”.
