Uruguay

Simón and the Bear

Bimbo admits responsibility in worker’s death

and pays dollars 160,000 in damages

The Mexican transnational corporation Bimbo was forced to admit its responsibility in the death of the 25-year-old Uruguayan worker Simón Santana, which occurred while the young man was on duty. As a result, Bimbo has agreed to pay the family US$ 160,000 in compensatory damages, the highest sum ever paid in Uruguay in a labor action.

At the initial hearing in the civil proceeding, held on Oct. 23, 2008, the company had offered the family the insignificant sum of Uruguayan pesos 8,224.50 (some 330 dollars at the Oct. 2008 exchange rate), as sole compensation for unpaid wages, general and special damages and loss of income.

The terrible death of Simón Santana exposed the conduct and policies of transnational corporations in developing countries, where they set up shop to take advantage of the cheap labor while disregarding even the most basic labor safety regulations, as denounced by the International Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurant, Catering, Tobacco and Allied Workers’ Associations (IUF).

Bimbo’s responsibility was proven in an action brought in the First Instance Court in Labor Matters of the Fifth Term, heard by Judge María Rosa Silva Rienzo and backed by considerable evidence gathered by the Police and the General Inspection Office of the Ministry of Labor. Bimbo settled in the first conciliatory hearing.

A young man called Simón

Simón (named after Simón Riquelo, who became a symbol of the disappeared after he was snatched as a baby during the military dictatorship that ruled Uruguay in the 1970s and 1980s) was killed in a work accident on Sept. 3, 2008, while cleaning a cooling machine in the industrial plant of Panificadora Bimbo del Uruguay SA, located in the outskirts of Montevideo, where he had started working earlier that year.

The young man was performing his tasks unsupervised, as no foreman had been appointed to the area he was working in, and wearing no safety gear. As he cleaned the machine, his clothes were snagged by the moving gears of the machinery, which had no protective guards. He was pulled into the machine, and, since he was alone, he was caught inside the machine for more than 15 minutes, before anybody came to rescue him. By then, it was too late. The company had cut down on personnel and Simón had been overburdened with a workload.

Simón was born on Nov. 24, 1982, to a family of artists. His parents were part of a puppeteer troupe that performed in the streets and in solidarity shows in cooperatives, trade unions and other social groups that were active in the mobilizations that sought to end Uruguay’s decade long dictatorship.

He was an inquisitive and smart boy, who by the age of 15 had completed his technical training in computer maintenance and assembly in Curitiba, Brazil, where he and his mother had been living temporarily. Despite his training, when they returned to Uruguay in 2007, the only work Simón was able to find was in cleaning services.

The deadly bear’s cave

“Simón was really excited when he started working at Bimbo. I remember how he said to me, ‘It’s a factory, mom, so there’ll be many opportunities for me to progress. I’m not going to be washing windows forever,’” his mother, Alicia Farías, recalls. But only a few months after he started working there, Simón suffered his first work accident, cutting his hand with a heavy steel plate.

The workers at Bimbo’s Uruguayan subsidiary had no trade union to represent them and faced multiple labor problems: high worker turnover due to the low wages, personnel cuts that resulted in the overburdening of the workers who remained, violation of work safety regulations, and the imposition of orders through fear…

The Montevideo police report documenting the fatal accident states that the cooling machine was turned on while it was being cleaned. The investigation by the Ministry of Labor and Social Security found that the death was caused by technical (negligence) and human error (overburdening of workers).

The death was barely featured in the news, with only one television network briefly covering it. On the night of the accident, the company quickly moved to place the guards, protections and signs that had been missing from the deadly machine. The following morning, the Bimbo delivery trucks were back on their routes as if nothing had happened.

An avoidable death

Luis Rodríguez Turrina is the lawyer who represented the family in the action brought against the company. After turning down the absurd compensation offer made by the Mexican transnational corporation and following the conciliatory stage in the Ministry of Labor, Rodríguez Turrina filed a suit with the labor courts claiming damages.

Sixteen months later, Bimbo admitted it was responsible for the death and agreed to pay US$ 16,000 by way of settlement. While in Uruguay this is a historical sum for damages awarded in any such labor action, the Mexican multinational had already been forced to pay substantial amounts in fines for work accidents occurring in its California plants, in the United States.

The company -which first began operating in Uruguay in 2006, gradually buying up most of its competitors and establishing a virtual monopoly in the bread and baked goods market- still has a criminal action pending, which is now at the preliminary inquiry stage, under study by the prosecutor, who could charge the company with criminal liability in Simón’s death.

“Regardless of the outcome of the labor action, where justice was served, the State and the working class must act as watchdogs to control employers and demand their strict observance of all applicable safety and health regulations in order to minimize as much as possible work accidents such as these, which are fully avoidable,” Rodríguez Turrina said.