With Alexander Mosquea

Anti-unionism and persecution

in Frito-Lay Dominicana

The workers of the transnational company held a picket last 15^th September in front of the factory in Santo Domingo.  Sirel had a conversation with Alexander Mosquea, General Secretary of the National Union of Frito-Lay Dominicana Workers (according to its initials in Spanish, SINTRALAYDO), in order to know the precedents that caused this demonstration to happen.

-Which is the reason for this picket?

-There is a persistent attitude of harassment and aggression on the Human Resources Manager, Xavier Rodríguez, towards unionized workers. Apart from this there is a number of violations to the Collective Agreement which have taken place in the last four months, e.g. salary cut, not payment of the severance pay when workers are fired, among others. For this reason, we are holding this demonstration.

-Which other measures have been taken?

-We have made several denunciations before the Ministry of Work, which imply the non-compliance of many rights that we have been suffering since last year, but we consider that this phase is over, the workers’ demonstrations is a previous step to court.

Unfortunately, the Ministry has not declared itself about the denunciations we have made and even if we have the best intention to negotiate in good faith, it is very difficult not to resort to other measures since Frito-Lay and this Mr. Rodríguez do not understand that they have to respect the right to unionize and that one of collective agreement.

According to the exact words of the Human Resources Manager, we are ‘good for nothing’. It is really difficult to reach to agreements with such a work context.

In this picket we are demanding, apart from the abovementioned, that the commitments that the company has made to the workers must be entered into record; we also demand that three comrades, who have recently been fired for unjustified reasons, must be reinstated, but mostly we claim that constant persecution and harassment towards unionized workers ought to stop, that the terror raised by Mr. Rodríguez has to be ceased.

-Which are the steps forward?

-For the moment we will continue to be alert and in motion, we count on Rel-UITA’s support to report these outrages of the transnational company, but we are ready to deepen the crackdown if Frito-Lay does not change its attitude.