After four days of strike, the workers of the iron and steel plant of Mutún de Puerto Suárez were able to be heard by the directors of the Chinese company Sinosteel, because this Thursday they installed a dialogue table to deal with the issue of improvement on the salary scale.
Sinosteel, the company that executes the Mutún project, called a meeting of its officials this morning, after the blockade was installed on the Bioceanic highway that connects Santa Cruz with the border with Brazil, precisely in the area of Punta Carretera.
“We are in a meeting from 10:00 this Thursday with the directors of the Chinese company. Our petition is being processed and we want to reach a preliminary agreementwhich will be signed to lift the blockade and continue working normally,” reported Gilbert Córdova, executive secretary of the Germán Busch province Regional Workers Center (COR) in telephone contact with EL DEBER.
However, Córdova clarified that the blockade on the route to Brazil still continues and said that this measure will be lifted only if the pre-agreement is reached and commented that the meeting with the directors is on the right track. Likewise, he did not specify the time at which the meeting will end, since the demands of the workers are still being analyzed.
“They want to pay a national minimum wage (Bs 2,164) to technicians, imagine that a professional with academic training and work experience intend to set a categorization whose maximum limit reaches Bs 6,000 (…). Let’s exploit the Mutún, not the Bolivian worker”, demanded the secretary of the COR when explaining the demands of the employees.
The workers began a work stoppage on Monday and they blocked the entrance of the Mutún company to demand an improvement in the salary scale and this Thursday they installed a blockade point on the Bioceánica highway, in Puerto Suárez.