The Metallurgical Workers Union (UOM) carried out the first day of national strike for 24 hours and mobilized -as it had announced- to the building that Grupo Techint has in Puerto Madero. The act held there sought not only to express the claim for the salary improvements demanded by the union, but also to denounce that the company directed by Paolo Rocca is preventing a salary agreement. “We are in this place to tell the Techint group not to meddle and allow the joint negotiation to come to fruition. It is not possible to continue sustaining a salary of misery and hunger that hits the metallurgical family while businessmen fill their pockets” , assured the secretary general of the UOM, Abel Furlán.
“We want a raise, the whore who gave birth to it!” Interrupted the crowd that accompanied Furlán and the rest of the union’s national leadership. Columns from the various regional offices that the union has in the suburbs were arriving early at the Techint building. The group, as denounced by Furlán, is the one that is pressing the business chambers so that an agreement is not reached for the July, August and September quarters, as had been agreed at the beginning of the year.
For a month now, the business chambers, pushed by Techint, have been conspiring against a parity agreement by not presenting salary recomposition proposals and limiting themselves to rejecting the requests made by the UOM.
“It is not possible to continue supporting a salary of misery and hunger that hits the metallurgical family while businessmen fill their pockets,” said Furlán and warned that “our patience has run out. It is time to put in centrality how much our effort is worth and It is not possible that our efforts generate wealth for companies, especially Techint, and they are denying us a decent wage.”
The union leader acknowledged that they were summoned for today by the Ministry of Labor, but announced that if the employers’ intransigence persists, a 48-hour national strike will begin tomorrow, Thursday. “If that is not enough, next week it will be 72 hours from Wednesday. We are not willing for the employers to continue denying us our rights. They intend to naturalize that the salary is a pittance,” said Furlán.
