This Thursday The negotiations that are taking place between the Frigocerro company, the Workers’ Federation of the Meat and Allied Industries (Foica) and the Ministry of Labor and Social Security (MTSS) will be resumed.tending to find a solution that avoids measures that may involve a stoppage of activities in that sector of the national industry, which was warned by the union.
Frigocerro, an industrial complex in Durazno dedicated to the slaughter of cattle and sheep in which a dispute is taking place between the company and the workers’ union, denounced that a surprise measure to abandon the slaughter determined production losses and the death of five sheep, in a scenario that makes them even think about stopping sheep slaughtering.
This was reported by the refrigerator’s lawyer, Salvador Alessandra, on the program Así nos va, on radio Carve.
Company analysis
Alessandra told in the radio interview that on Tuesday of last week the staff had been summoned for a slaughter of 3,000 sheep and that when the same union began, they stopped her and obstructed the movement in the plant. “The police were called, I spoke with the Chief of Police (…) because with the LUC they cannot prevent the entry of animals or people to the plant. There they go to work, but they start to work, as it is commonly called, reluctantly, ”she said.
He added that for this reason only 600 animals were slaughtered and that the company was forced to bring in a crew from outside and finish the slaughter with people who did want to work.
“On Wednesday the union sends a note saying that in order not to have problems they have to sign a productivity agreement for the sheep. We studied it, we said yes, there were no problems. I write the agreement, I send it to the union lawyer at night and they answer me saying ‘no, we don’t want that anymore, we want more things,’” he said.
Alessandra indicated that in a meeting that had another objective, she spoke of the situation in a tripartite meeting, with the union and the MTSS, leaving the parties to continue analyzing the issue.
Later, on Friday, he said, “scheduling the slaughter for Saturday that there were 400 cattle, knowing that there could be problems because we knew the history of the union, we told the union spokeswoman that 400 large cattle were going to go, are they going to slaughter? And she told us: ‘we have no problem with beef’. Innocently they take 400 animals, at 6 o’clock the slaughter starts and an hour later the union stops working and they all leave together. Nobody knew what was going on the electrician who was on duty, the boilermaker, left, it was total chaos. They had slaughtered 50 animals, leaving 350 in the pens ready for slaughter. Some came out saying they were going fishing.”
“The company, in the chaos and shock, had to go out and get people. A task that took 8 hours ended up taking almost 24. They finished at 6:00 p.m. and had to continue fishing on Monday. Until that moment we didn’t know what had happened,” he said.
This Monday, the company decided to suspend all the workers who had abandoned their tasks and fire those who had abandoned their tasks but had a record in the file, such as being absent without notice or suspensions for talking on the cell phone during work time. “After 15 minutes I get an email from the ministry for a tripartite, which was held yesterday (this Tuesday) and They also call me from Foica saying that we should lift the measure or else they would stop the national industry”, he counted.
Regarding the meeting at the ministry, Alessandra said that “the ministry understood our situation because we didn’t know what had happened. In November, the wage council act was signed, in which there is a procedure when there is a conflict. These people out of nowhere take a union measure and leave us practically swept away.”
He explained that “We can go so far as to review the dismissals with spirits of good will, but we cannot lift the sanctions because there were already precedents in 2015 when Frigocerro was illegally occupied and lost the entire harvest, and although later there was a sentence in our favor, the millions of lost dollars no one compensated them”.
He also recalled that at the end of the year Frigocerro gave a special bonus to the workers, for $10,000 that the workers preferred not to document because that implies making contributions and receiving a smaller amount; “I have already heard the speech that Frigocerro pays in black, that is wrong, what they do not want is to pay the State”.
The company’s doubt
Alessandra admitted that data all this “The company has certain doubts as to whether it continues to slaughter sheep (…) the image of the refrigerator is falling apart and foreign customers do not know if the refrigerator is going to comply or not because the union takes these measures. The consequences are paid by the poor worker who is sometimes held hostage by what the union leaders do, and by the refrigerator that has to face the consequences”.
He also denounced that “Five animals died because they couldn’t go to slaughter, the trifle had to be thrown away, part of the meat also because on Saturday when almost 80 people left the slaughter there weren’t enough people to finish it properly”.
On an exit to the subject, he announced that “we want to give the ministry a hand in this situation, but we understand that we have to maintain the suspensions.”
“We are willing to close this because Frigocerro is thinking of not slaughtering any more sheep soon, because it does not want any more problems, because only Frigocerro loses. We are going to propose that we lift the dismissals, we pass them on to suspensions so that they do not lose their source of employment, but we are going to maintain the 15-day suspension, ”he concluded.
