The union leader informed a local media outlet that workers are forced to transfer from one section to another where they are not qualified to work, under threat that if they refuse, their wages will be withheld.

“This is something that has been happening as a result of the country’s economic and social situation. The company has adopted an unyielding approach to people’s demands,” he said.

Páez described how the multinational corporation’s middle management openly declared, during meetings with union representatives, that workers who wished to keep their jobs had to do whatever was asked of them without complaint, threatening to hire new workers among the masses of people who are unemployed.

Things like this “generate discontent and create a hostile environment in the plant,” he told local newspaper El Diario.

The company also eliminated benefits such as the cafeteria service in the night shift, without prior notice and without discussing it with the union.

This situation is far from being limited to the Villa Nueva plant. The same happens in the rest of the country, Páez said, and he recalled that, in Argentina’s current state of affairs, with a blatantly pro-corporate government, workers are liable for dismissal just for merely staging a picket line to protest management actions.