Salary negotiations are starting to lead to strikes across the country, but a key one was stopped yesterday when the Labour Ministry ruled a mandatory conciliation between the Metallurgical Workers’ Union (UOM) and the sector’s business chambers, which UOM’s head, Antonio Caló, said they would accept.
But conflict is escalating elsewhere, with the Banking Association general secretary confirming that his union will protest tomorrow and strike next Tuesday, while production remains paralyzed by workers of Santa Fe’s soyoil complex, where an additional strike by officials in the Senasa food quality agency could also contribute to delays in exports.
“The workers earning the sector’s minimum wage, which is 6,700 pesos after taxes, are going to kill me and hang me from the Obelisk,” Caló said yesterday, warning about the pressure for higher hikes.
UOM’s leader said he was worried because salary negotiations were “any union leader’s biggest worry” and they looked far from solved, with “businessmen not moving from their 22 percent” offer while his workers demand wage hikes around 32 percent.
Although Caló accepted the state’s decision, the CAMIMA metallurgical chamber seemed happier about it. “The decision was expected and needed, because it will allow time to improve dialogue between the parties,” the chamber said.
Tomorrow, representatives from the UOM and the CAMIMA and ADIMRA business chambers will meet at the Labour Ministry in the afternoon to continue negotiations.
But Banking Association chief Sergio Palazzo looked much more willing to defy the government, saying that “we will probably ignore” any mandatory conciliation ruling issued by the Labour Ministry regarding their walk off the job next Tuesday.
Meanwhile, the debate over whether the goverment is trying to impose a “ceiling” on wage hikes continued yesterday, with Economy Minister Axel Kicillof denying the rumours started by the anti-government splinter of the CGT umbrella union. “Negotiations are totally free. What the government cares about is preventing businessmen from saying ‘OK, we’ll raise salaries, because we can just translate that into higher prices afterwards.’ I heard this first hand from some businessmen,” Kicillof said.
Union leaders such as teamsters’ Pablo Moyano and train drivers’ Omar Maturano say the government has been lobbying for hikes below 25 percent, a suggestion that their ally Palazzo backed yesterday too.
SOY EXPORTING COMPLEX
Soyoil shipments were slowed yesterday by the start of a wage strike by a union representing 20 percent of the country’s crushing workers, while the powerful CGT-backed dock-workers union debated whether to join the work stoppage.
Argentina is the world’s first exporter of soyoil, used in the international biofuels industry and soymeal livestock feed, which means the crop is a massive source of much-needed dollars for the Central Bank’s coffers, which are seeing high demand from importers.
The strike by the Soyoil Workers Federation comes smack in the middle of what promises to be a record Argentine soy harvest, although the drop in global soy bean prices has meant that less dollars have entered the country this year.
Dock workers’ representatives in the CGT labour federation, which have the power to paralyze ports, were voting late last night on whether to join the crushers strike.
The soyoil federation met with representatives of the CIARA-CEC export company chamber on Monday at the Labour Ministry in Buenos Aires, but were unable to reach a deal. The workers are asking for wage hikes of 42 to 48 percent, significantly above all the country’s inflation estimates.
“The federation has never been willing to negotiate these percentages,” CIARA-CEC said in a statement. The union issued a statement of its own, accusing CIARA-CEC of not responding to its wage proposal, and promising to continue the strike “as long as it takes.”
A representative for the San Lorenzo Soyoil Workers, which represents 80 percent of Argentina’s soyoil crushers and is based in the country’s main grain hub Rosario, said it has until May 27 to negotiate a wage deal and plans no strikes.
But the CGT umbrella union, which represents truck drivers as well as dock workers, was considering to walking off the job according to spokesman Edgardo Quiroga.
Source: Buenos Aires Herald