More on the origins of the routine cruelties

-both large and small- that characterize this

company’s labor policy.

Five -

For some years now, an absurd tactic has been applied in Nestlé Peru. Most likely picked up by past officers of the transnational corporation at some human resource management course, this tactic was then applied with an enthusiasm worthy of a better cause, and it is now zealously taken up again by the current trolls.¹ The tactic consists in replacing, as much as possible, the term ‘worker’ with words like contributor and collaborator, and the term ‘work’ with words like collaboration, cooperation, and contribution.

This nonsensical practice raises a number of questions: When do workers stop being workers to become contributors or collaborators? When and on what grounds did the word ‘worker’ become a nasty word in Nestlé’s vocabulary? Maybe this responds to that ridiculous notion whereby you can make something bad go away by simply not mentioning it by name? Much like is often done with the word ‘cancer’? And if workers are collaborators or contributors, what then should we call management?

So we turned to the dictionary for some definitions, and we found that ‘contributor,’ for example, can be defined as “a person who contributes an article, story, etc., to a newspaper, magazine, or the like, without being part of the permanent staff.” Could it be that the company saw semantic manipulation as a good tactic for achieving its goal of setting up a virtual factory based on outsourced labor and precarious contracts? We also find ‘collaborationism,’ defined as the “act of cooperating actively with a political regime imposed by a country’s enemy or occupation forces.” It would not be stretching the imagination too far to apply this concept to labor relations in our societies, with the only difference that the ones using the label of collaborator should be the workers and not the company.

Next, we reviewed Peru’s legislation, but could not find the terms ‘collaborator,’ ‘cooperator,’ or ‘contributor’ used in any law or regulation as synonymous with worker. We also consulted the relevant ILO documentation, where the closest thing we could find was ‘cooperation’ -in Recommendation No. 94, “Co-operation at the Level of the Undertaking.” There, the ILO establishes that: “Appropriate steps should be taken to promote consultation and co-operation between employers and workers² at the level of the undertaking on matters of mutual concern not within the scope of collective bargaining machinery […].” The ILO obviously considers that cooperation is possible within the company, without it entailing that workers stop being workers just because they cooperate. Moreover, in order to cooperate (or collaborate or contribute) it is essential that workers access timely, accurate and adequate information on the company, so that they are able to assess any situation or problem and can participate effectively in decision-making, something that is very far from the intentions of the trolls and the reality of Nestlé Peru.

It is clear, then, that by arbitrarily twisting language to suit their purpose, these perverse conductors of labor relations are attempting to change what work and workers have historically meant. So, the least we could ask of Nestlé is that it extend the ‘responsibility’ it boasts so much of when it talks of Corporate Social Responsibility to its use of language.

Six -

These semantic barbarisms have spawned other absurdities, which have had far worse consequences, to the great satisfaction of these perfidious characters.

Until the year 2007, Nestlé Peru -like most companies- divided job positions into 6 categories (which were numbered 10 to 15), each with their corresponding salary. But the great geniuses at Human Relations thought that this was just too simple, and they had to go and complicate things. Arguing that there were too many categories, they suggested that they be cut down to three and that they be organized in what they called a CAD Program. The Union, acting in good faith and seeing that apparently this was not a radically different system, accepted the proposal, which was then incorporated into the collective bargaining agreement.

But what, you may ask, does CAD mean? Well, this is a Spanish acronym that stands for High Performance Collaborator. But in troll terms, things just can’t be that clear-cut. So they divided the CADs into COTs, COEs, and COMs. COT, which is the top CAD category, stands for Technical Operation Collaborator, and it includes the highest skilled workers, such as mechanics, electricians, and product development specialists. COE means Standard Operation Collaborator, and it groups machine operators -although, with the aim of sowing divisions among workers, the company arbitrarily included some machine operators in the COT category. Lastly, COM stands for Manual Operation Collaborator, a category that groups workers who perform manual or cleaning tasks. Here, too, the company acted in bad faith and placed some of the workers that should clearly be included in the COT category, according to the company’s own definition.

Worse still is that the trolls apply the CAD Program according to their whim. For example, they may decide to move a worker from the COM category to the COE category, but without upgrading the worker’s salary accordingly. Another example is that mechanics (which should be included in the COT category) are now called mechanic-operators and placed in the COE category, which entails downgrading the task, with the ensuing reduction in salary for any workers who are assigned to this task.

Seven -

Under Peruvian law, the list of demands proposed by a union for a new collective bargaining agreement must be filed at least 30 days prior to the expiration of the agreement in force. As the last collective bargaining agreement expired on December 31, 2008, SUNTRANEP presented its proposal -with the demands to be included in the collective agreement that would go into effect on January 1, 2009- on November 28, 2008. That is, right in the middle of the strike. On December 16, in compliance with article 57 of the Collective Labor Relations Act -which establishes that negotiations must begin within 10 days of presentation of the proposal-, Human Resource Manager Manuel Monge acknowledged reception of the proposal and scheduled a meeting with the Union for January 7, to begin the bargaining process.

But on January 5, Mr. Monge sent a new letter to the Union, where it made a series of observations to the Union’s proposal: first, that the Union had omitted its address in the proposal; second, that according to law, the number of members the Union has entitles it to participate with four negotiators, and not five as announced in the proposal; and third, it asks the Union to indicate who it will engage as advisors, “specifying their professions and license numbers, and presenting proof of their qualification by the professional associations they belong to.” Based on these observations, Mr. Monge determined that the proposal could not be accepted and thus the company could not begin the bargaining process.

Mr. Monge has displayed a truly remarkable knack for creating conflict. It took him 38 days to note the observations he finally made only two days before the date of the meeting he himself had convened to begin negotiations. Our readers will no doubt be thinking that if omitting the Union’s domicile in the proposal posed such a serious impediment to the HR management department, then how was it able to send the letter to the Union? The answer is so simple it’s incredible: it contacted the General Secretary of the Union through the HR office located in the factory. This unnecessary complication is what we would call “gilding the lily,” and it is certainly a very bad way of preparing the ground to begin negotiations.

The Collective Labor Relations Act establishes that in the event a company refuses to receive a collective bargaining agreement proposal, the Labor Authorities must intervene. But, such intervention was not even considered, because the company called the Union as soon as it received the proposal and scheduled a meeting to negotiate an agreement directly with the workers. Not only did it not reject the proposal, it made no observations to it. So it was tacitly understood that the proposal had been accepted. Moreover, article 54 of the Act stipulates that “the parties have the obligation of negotiating in good faith and of refraining from any action that may be damaging to the other party, including not hindering the legitimate exercise of the right to strike.” With its behavior, Nestlé Peru is breaching that obligation. In other words, by unduly dragging out the process, Nestlé is denying the Union its right to collectively bargain.³ The Labor Authority found that the company had no valid arguments, and ordered it to begin the collective bargaining process -that was the third time it ordered the company to initiate negotiations.⁴

As our readers may recall, in our first installment we informed that the trolls had issued a Communication to the Personnel where they announced that they would soon “duly counter” the conclusions of the Labor Ministry inspections which determined that the company had incurred acts of substitution to replace striking workers. Well, they never did counter them, and Nestlé Peru was instead fined 105,000 New Soles (32,500 US dollars). Now it will certainly be charged new fines for refusing to initiate the collective bargaining process, repeatedly going against the orders of the Ministry of Labor’s Collective Bargaining Division.

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