Pacific Nut, the Chilean nut, almond and plum exporter, was temporarily closed down on Monday by striking workers who blocked access to two of the company’s facilities.
What the Santiago Times reported as “the first “worker take-over” of a fruit export company to occur in nearly 40 years” ended with nine arrests and company lawyers blaming a recent labour ministry ruling, which reclassified certain part-time workers as full-time.
Ninety part-time employees and six contracted employees forming a union. Twenty part-time union members participated in the strike, eight of whom where amongst those arrested.
Pacific Nut has 50 full-time employees and between 330 and 360 part-time or seasonal employees. It exports around US$20 million of nuts and fruit each season.
The strikers demanded “better salaries, special compensation for travel expenses, better health and safety conditions at the workplace, and a two-year contract”, said the local press. Pacific Nut stated it is not prepared to extend contracts beyond the six-month norm for the industry, which it claims helps defines workers as “part-time.”
Press reports said: “after contract talks stalled between the company and its part-time employees, the workers sought clarification from the Labour Ministry regarding their right to strike. The Labour Ministry ruled twice that the workers were part-time and without the right to strike. But a third ruling, on August 1, determined that - based on new information - the workers should be considered full-time employees and that their union had the right to strike. Workers voted to strike the following day and began their strike Monday.”
Luis Schmidt, president of the National Agricultural Association, Chile’s most important agriculture lobby group, said: “This has been a wake up call for us and it comes at a most inauspicious time for our industry, because of the low-valued dollar and tough international competition,” said.
“This is an issue that we knew was going to come up, given all the recent labor agitation and it is something that our industry is going to have to work through,” added Rodrigo Echeverria, president of the Fedefruta fruit growers’ lobby.
And Ronald Bown, president of Chile’s Exporters Association, went even further, telling the Santiago Times that the problem was an example of “the general social disorder and moral decay of our society.”
He said: “Our social order has been weakened, and it is not the kind of thing where you can point a finger at the government to blame it, to say it has committed some kind of mistake. Rather, this has been a long time in the making, and we think there’s been moral decay throughout our society.
“Just as we reject it when a businessman or grower fails to abide by the law, we also reject it when labor groups do not abide by the law, especially when they force others to do things they don’t want to do,” added Bown. “This can’t be allowed, and we must eliminate things like this at their roots.”
