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Open Letter to Nestlé’s CEO
Mr.
Paul Bulcke,
On June 19, the Nestlé Ice Cream Plant in Santo Domingo,
Dominican Republic, was brutally shut down, leaving more than
200 workers out of a job.
We say that this was a brutal measure because it was done
without prior notice to the Nestlé Ice Cream Workers’
Union (SINTRANESTED), an affiliate of our organization, the
National Federation of Food, Hotel, Beverages and Tobacco
Industry Workers (FENTIAHBETA) of the Dominican Republic.
On the morning of June 19, the workers arrived at the ice cream
plant to perform their tasks like any other day, only to be met
by riot police and private security officers who blocked the
entrance to their place of work. In the plant’s parking lot,
they were informed that the factory was closed for good. At that
time, the company representatives made several promises: they
would pay six months of salary as severance compensation; during
that six-month period they would maintain the health insurance
of all the workers; and they offered to relocate 25 percent of
the personnel to other Nestlé plants. None of these
promises were kept.
During the months prior to the factory’s closure, all the
personnel was forced to work overtime, and the cold storage
chambers were filled up with products that Nestlé is
still marketing today, more than three months after the plant
closed down.
This savage measure is particularly outrageous if we consider
that many of the workers had over ten years of seniority, and
that among the layoffs there were sick people and pregnant
women, and that in many cases the workers’ wage was the sole
income of their families.
The way in which the plant was closed down and the unexpected
loss of a job had more than economic consequences for the laid
off workers, who have also suffered a great emotional and
psychological trauma, as the situation has brought on dramatic
changes in their lives. In some cases, there have been severe
episodes of depression and miscarriages due to stress and
anguish.
We strongly condemn these practices that constitute a harsh
violation of labor and human rights, aggravated by the
conviction that the authorities of the Ministry of Labor of the
Dominican Republic were not only aware that the plant would be
closed down, they even provided police officers to
psychologically pressure the workers and, if necessary,
physically repress them. This can only be described with two
words: bribery, on one side, and complicity, on the other.
This terrible aggression against the more than 200 laid off
workers, who are not likely to find another job in a country
undergoing an economic and financial crisis, will not go
unnoticed. In this sense, the IUF, along with its affiliates,
will spare no efforts to make this situation known and denounce
it to the world.
We, the participants of the 8th Regional
Conference of Nestlé Workers, gathered in Buenos Aires under
the slogan “For a Solidarity-Based and Efficient Federation,”
with labor representatives from Argentina, Brazil, Chile,
Ecuador, Mexico, Panama, Peru, the Dominican Republic, and
Uruguay, expressed our absolute condemnation of the moral and
economic massacre perpetrated by Nestlé against the
workers of the Santo Domingo ice cream plant.
Moreover, together with the IUF, the Conference reaffirmed its
belief that “The destruction of regular employment has turned
into one of the main pillars of the human resource strategy
deployed by corporations to finance record-high dividends and
the repurchase of stock in the name of ‘maximizing shareholder
value.’ In addition to brand name products, these companies
manufacture insecurity. Precarious jobs are a business policy
aimed at reducing and ultimately eliminating the workers that
are directly employed by the companies whose products they
manufacture and with which they can negotiate their terms and
conditions of employment. Precarious work is an attempt to
destroy unions.”
Nestlé,
along with other transnational corporations, has the sad
privilege of leading the trend towards the elimination of
regular employment, and the closing down of the Santo Domingo
ice cream plant is part of that strategy that seeks to
completely dehumanize workers by treating them like mere
instruments, tools, and machines at the service of the constant
growth of corporate profit. “Corporate social responsibility” is
a rhetoric device, a “pretty” phrase to use in speeches, while
in practice Nestlé applies its “indecent strategy.”
Lastly, the 8th Regional Conference of Nestlé
Workers declared its full and profound solidarity with the
workers laid off in the Dominican Republic, and the
participating delegations undertook to participate actively in
the campaign to denounce this barbaric corporate act, beginning
with the dissemination of this Open Letter on October 7, 2008,
World Day for Decent Work, as a symbol of our proposal to
humanize and dignify work.
On behalf of the 8th Regional Conference of Nestlé
Workers
Gerardo Iglesias
IUF Latin American Regional Secretary
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