The attitude of the Association of Workers and Employees of Conaprole (AOEC), “With union measures that are not justified, it generates great unease and concern in the producers,” said Fabián Hernándezpresident of the Florida Milk Producers Society, one of the main unions in the productive sector.
Hernandez commented to The Observer that the productive sector, constantly and as a consequence of different realities, “has been seeing how Many tamberos have fallen by the wayside in the last 10 years”, for example due to the price crisis of 2015, the floods and droughts that followed and especially the last three-year period in which the most intense and harmful drought of the last 30 years was expressed, according to what the Minister of Livestock, Agriculture said. and Fisheries, Fernando Mattos.
This loss of producers, he added, “left a big hole in the field, because these producers at least in some cases continue in the productive sector, but they never become milk producers again.”
Yet at the same time, throughout that period, industry worker sectorbeing that it is involved in the same agro-industrial chain, “It has not lost jobs and has permanently resorted to conflicts that always end up harming others, such as dairy farmers, the company (Conaprole) and consumers”.
He specified that “not even during the pandemic” there were losses for Conaprole’s industrial personnel, whose income was not affected, since “they were compensated.”
The reason for the conflict
Hernandez explained that The reason for the new conflict is based on a technological investment made by Conaprole so that certain dairy products (ultra-pasteurized milk) reach the consumer in the packaging that consumers demand today for better handling and conservation in the refrigerator.
“These are changes that are taking place all over the world and they have to be made,” he said.
Conaprole activated this technological advance, he explained, at the Rodríguez plant, in the town of San José, without implying “loss of jobs or salary, only changes in the workplace at the same plant, but the union opposes and In all this, as in other cases, the company always gave in more, what is happening is unfortunate”.
It is also, a packaging company that can be managed by 14 people and Conaprole ordered 22 due to the great absenteeismwhich is 12%, reported Hernández.
The latest statement from the AOEC.
Regarding the supply to the domestic market, he indicated that during the extensive union conflict of 2022, Conaprole stopped reaching certain outlets in the proper way with many products, leaving space that was occupied by other brands“and that is irretrievable”.
Any conflict, like the current one, “always hits and very hard in the weakest sector of the chain, in the dairy, when US$ 5 million or US$ 10 million less is billed, that is transferred to the company’s productivity and therefore therefore it hits the price of milk”.
The proposal
Hernández considered that it would be very useful for an old wish of the productive sector to be fulfilled, that there be a tripartite body for dialogue, where milk producers join the meeting areas between the union and the company.
Finally, Hernández said that It is difficult to be optimistic, but it appeals to “rationality” so that the conflict can be quickly overcomethe company continues to advance technologically and the producer and consumer are not affected.
