On July 1st, the IUF’s Meat Industry Division held a teleconference with the participation of some 40 union leaders from the sector. Alberto Fantini, secretary general of Argentina’s Labor Federation of Meat and Meat Byproduct Industry Workers, reported on the situation in the sector and the COVID-19 pandemic. Below are the key points of his presentation.
Nestlé breaches collective bargaining agreement and lays off a worker in the middle of the pandemic
Carlos Velastegui, general secretary of the Labor Committee of Nestlé Ecuador Workers, an IUF affiliate, spoke with La Rel about the irresponsible way the transnational corporation has behaved in that country, where it has been negligent in the application of safety protocols and has further failed to comply with the collective bargaining agreement in the midst of an unprecedented global crisis.
“We’re here. We just want an opportunity”
This LGBTI pride month, Rel-UITA (IUF Latin America) launched “Trade Unions and Diversity,” a video series featuring first-person accounts of …
A battle has been won, but the struggle continues
A vigorous and effective denunciation campaign succeeded this past Tuesday, June 9, in blocking the submission to congress of a proposed amendment to Provisional Measure 927, which establishes a 20-minute break for every 1.4 hours worked in meatpacking plants.
Corporate health above public health
The Labor Prosecutor’s Office, the IUF, and our affiliate organizations CNTA and CONTAC (Brazil’s national confederations of food and related industry workers) are conducting a signature-gathering campaign for a petition to block the proposed amendment to Provisional Measure 927.
“They plan to solve the problem with more neoliberalism”
Honduras is a nationwide living experiment for testing out political, social, and economic trends that are later transplanted to other latitudes. The 2009 coup d’état heralded similar situations that would soon spread across Latin America. Labor reform, the invasion of paid-by-the-hour and intermittent work, political assassinations disguised as crimes of passion, criminalization and judicialization of popular struggles, a new penal code, the application of novel union-busting tactics, and institutionalized and unpunished corruption. Of that pandemic, Honduras is the hotspot.
“We have to plan for the day after”
This month of May, Rel-UITA (IUF Latin America) and Clamu (the IUF Latin American Women’s Committee) launched “Ronda Viva,” a program that seeks to provide a space for connection between the Regional Organization’s women and LGBTI people in times of COVID-19.
Pandemic fodder
The health situation in Brazil under the COVID-19 pandemic is a faithful reflection of the institutional mess and the irresponsibility of a government that mocks its people on a daily basis.
The door is open, we just need to step through and walk
Rethinking ourselves in order to rethink the world The door is open, we just need to step through and walk …
Coronavirus and human rights
The multinational corporation Arcor called on police forces to prevent biosecurity controls from being carried out in the Bagley Córdoba plant, which specializes in cookie production, and to silence workers’ demands.