With Siderlei de Oliveira

 Cargill: Enough!

“Together we can beat the beast”

 

In the framework of the harsh battle being waged in Brazil against Cargill’s labor policy, one of the most authoritative sources on this issue, Siderlei Silva de Oliveira, president of CONTAC and the National Health-at-Work Institute of Brazil, traveled to Buenos Aires, where he spoke with SIREL in an exclusive interview. The aim of this trip was to move forward in the development of coordinated actions between Cargill workers of Argentina and Brazil

Gerónimo Venegas, UATRE General Secretary,  and Siderlei de Oliveira, CONTAC President

 

-What’s the main mission of your trip to Argentina?

-The main reason I’m here in Buenos Aires is to establish networks connecting Cargill workers from Brazil with Cargill workers from Argentina. This will go a long way towards strengthening an international movement that we hope will force this company to listen to reason, so that they will resume negotiations and honor the agreements it makes. We had already discussed this idea in an international seminar held in São Paulo last year, in which Brazilian IUF affiliates representing workers of the transnational corporation Cargill participated, along with a delegation of the Argentinean Union of Rural Workers and Stevedores (UATRE).

What we want to do now is intensify an alliance specifically with UATRE and Argentina’s food industry unions, as was defined in the Thirteenth Regional Latin American Conference of the IUF in October 2006. We have to optimize the levels of coordination -both for discussion and struggle purposes- among workers along the entire agriculture and food chain the transnational company operates in. The methodology we’ll apply will be to work at every point of the chain, as Cargill is a highly diversified company in terms of products, which range from soy to sugar cane to poultry production, and more.

In this sense, the alliance with UATRE will enable us to organize and coordinate within the sector, starting at the primary production of those commodities, which Cargill produces a great volume of in Argentina and also processes them there. In Brazil we are also working simultaneously with manufacture workers and rural laborers, that is, in every link of the chain.

 

-This union will only be between Brazil and Argentina?

-This is a network that we’re starting here, but which we plan to expand to other places, as we have already spoken with trade unions in many countries, including the United States. The stage we’re at now is one of data gathering and of seeing how this gigantic machinery called Cargill works on a global level. We want to find out what the working conditions at Cargill are like in other countries, and if it’s just in Brazil that the corporation behaves as it does. The information we are able to gather in Argentina will be very valuable for our struggle.

To combat a beast of this magnitude, you must find out where it lives, what its habits are, what it feeds on. That’s the stage we’re at now.

 

-What’s the status of the negotiations with Cargill in Brazil?

-Right now the negotiations between Cargill and the unions are at a standstill, despite our having struggled for two years to open up spaces for dialogue, and having sought solutions to improve this transnational corporation’s working conditions. Cargill is a company which has absolutely no respect for trade unions, and which does nothing to improve working and health conditions for its workers. It has even gone as far as forbidding workers from voluntarily contributing to their unions, in an attempt to render them totally defenseless in the face of company abuse. I think Cargill has made its antiunion policy very clear, having hurled its workers back to the times of the very first industrial revolution, turning them into hostages and slaves of the company.

 

-What work methodology does it use in its factories?

-Cargill is without a doubt the worst company we have in Brazil in the poultry industry. Its policy of systematic violation of workers’ rights is evident in its refusal to allow outside medical assistance to enter the factories, in particular its poultry production plant. Workers are treated by doctors in the company, and they are sometimes taken out in ambulances from inside the factory.

 

-Can the physical damages suffered by workers be verified?

-Yes, because the “worst” thing is that the company’s volume of production is increasing more and more, thus speeding up the work pace, which reaches unbearable heights. This is causing workers severe repetitive strain injuries, as is the case with those working in production lines. And I say that this is the worst because what it does is it leaves workers disabled for life. But you can also see it when workers exit the factory at the end of the workday, with their arms and hands marked or scratched. This is an atrocity that this transnational corporation is committing behind closed doors, so that the rest of Brazilian society will not find out about the abhorrent working conditions in Cargill.

 

-Is it true that Cargill is attempting to turn the conflict into an ideological issue?

-What happens is that Cargill belongs to a reactionary family, what we would call “backwards.” For them any capital-labor relation is a political problem. That’s why they gave their version: “What we have in Brazil is an ideological problem: socialists against capitalists.” So they treat us unionists like in the Cold War, as if we were an obstacle to production. In my opinion, they’re crazy. But, hey, these people see workers as the enemy. That’s an incredible contradiction, as it is a state-of-the-art company in terms of satellites, remote digital controls and technology; but at the same time it is centuries behind in other issues, such as the way they treat their own workers.

 

-What is the position of the Brazilian government?

-The Ministry of Justice has a bad image of Cargill, and from time to time it penalizes it. But we want the government to adopt a tougher stance, in the decisions that affect the company the most, such as tax or export benefits. Our position is that the government should grant these benefits, but only insofar as such benefits are reflected in the company’s treatment towards its workers. In any case, we’re not dealing with a normal market company that operates according to the rules of a democratic country. This “slave driving” company cannot be treated the same as so many other good companies that meet their social obligations. Cargill is a highly diversified company, which has problems in every activity sector it operates in: coffee, chocolate, fertilizers, chemical products, soy, sugar cane, seeds. At present, one of its two private ports is closed due to environmental problems. But our priority is the national campaign against the poultry industry, where Cargill is the perfect example of evil, of bad corporate activity, of slave-driving treatment and anti-union policy.

 

-What have you done to make Cargill’s practices known?

-We haven’t stood still, and we’ve sought international support and networking, to raise awareness about this situation among European consumers of Cargill products. We’ve also formed alliances with consumer defense groups and with trade union networks in the Old Continent.

 

In Buenos Aires, Gerardo Iglesias and Javier Amorín

© Rel-UITA

May 28, 2007