The Workers’ Federation of the Meat and Allied Industries (Foica), while there are several conflict fronts between workers and companies, denounced that in one of the cases there is “repression and persecution” of the workers. Martín Cardozo, president of Foica, assured The Observer that’s why the union does not rule out taking measures, such as surprise strikes.
“The leadership of the Foica sees this year a series of systematic attacks by companies”, said.
As detailed, the problems of 2022 on this issue began with Marfrig “discriminating in a payment”, followed with frigocerro“sanctioning 85 workers for taking a union action,” and they continued with Frigoyí, a company that, as they denounced this Tuesday in a statement, attacked workers affiliated with the union with “derogatory statements.”
“If there are no changes, we have already resolved to start taking different actions,” he warned. “Keep pulling the leash,” Foica said on her Twitter social network account on Tuesday.
The problem with Frigoyí
As he explained, since December 2021 the problems between Frigoyí and unionized workers. It all started, explained the union leader, when in the middle of the negotiation by the Wage Councils the company took crews on a Saturday – non-working day for workers in this industry – to remove production from the plant.
“The company took action, obviously with all its rights, but on Monday the plant workers were left without a citation, because the gang had taken his job. That’s where the relationship between the union and Frigoyí began to break down a bit,” he said.
In addition, in October 2021 the company presented an internal agreement platform that was left on pause until the negotiation passed through the Salary Councils. In January of this year the negotiation was resumed, although, according to the Foica complaint, no great progress has been made. “I think collective bargaining has been very slow,” Cardozo said.
Disarm the union
He explained that the problem worsened when, in the last week, the company issued “derogatory statements towards the leaders”. They are considered derogatory because the company did not refer to the union or the union organization, but to the workers who are in charge of it, which annoyed the Foica.
“The communiqués say so-and-so or leaders, and we understand that they are individual attacks on the leaders and not collective“, he added.
The federation supported and showed its solidarity with these workers who, it considers, were attacked.
“The company’s strategy is to behead the union and thus disarm itbecause it has a strong directive that has been working well for some time, and Foica will not allow that,” said Cardozo, who maintained that “the line was crossed,” and that is why the union intervened.
“Frigoyi passed a limit that does no good to anyone. Looking for derogatory adjectives to workers who have been working for 10 or 12 years and have zero sanctions, irreproachable workers and great human beings. And we are not going to allow that attack on colleagues with in order to behead the union,” he concluded.
Below is the statement released by Foica in which it is highlighted that the union emphatically repudiates the anti-union actions:
Communiqué of the Foica.
