Workers at the Mercedes-Benz plant in São Bernardo do Campo, on ABC Paulista, went on strike after the announcement of 3,600 layoffs announced by the automaker’s management. The restructuring will affect 2,200 direct workers and 1,400 temporary workers. The company has around 10,400 workers at this unit.
In assembly, on Thursday afternoon (8), production was paralyzed and should return on Monday. According to the union, there will be a meeting on Tuesday (13), with the company, to start negotiations. In a statement, Mercedes-Benz highlighted that “the discussions that directly impact our employees will be the subject of extensive negotiation with the ABC Metalworkers Union”.
The president of the ABC Metalworkers Union, Moisés Selérges, said, during the assembly, that the stoppage is a protest and that he intends to show the management “how to negotiate”, according to a report published on the entity’s website.
“We need to show that a negotiation process takes place around a table. Often, in a negotiation process, everything that the union wants will not prevail, but neither will everything that the company wants prevail”, says the text.
Aroaldo Oliveira da Silva, executive director of the union, recalled that the entity had already been discussing with the factory’s management topics such as the situation of the truck market, the need to restructure areas, the lack of parts and semiconductors.
Restructuring
The changes at the Mercedes-Benz plant involve the outsourcing of part of the production. According to the company, the decision is to focus on the manufacture of “trucks and bus chassis and on the development of technologies and services of the future”.
“We are going to stop producing some components internally and stop performing activities that can be carried out by other partner companies, such as: logistics, maintenance, manufacture and assembly of front axles and medium transmission, tooling and laboratories, until then carried out at the São Paulo plant. Bernardo do Campo (SP) and which will be carried out by contracted companies”, says the note.
The automaker also highlights that the preference is for hiring companies “in the Greater ABC region, in commitment to our local community”. The company also says that the chain of new suppliers should generate a large volume of business.
Mercedes-Benz has been operating in Brazil for over 65 years.
