Overtime and no
time-off pay days
The idea of
Nestlé Chile -a company with annual sales near 950 million US
dollars- is to produce at any cost, and when someone has to pay the cost, it
is workers who do so. The company has turned overtime –which are the ones
surpassing the regular work day—into permanent, provoking a number of
distortions in the working conditions and environment, which seriously
affect workers. Although this situation has been repeatedly reported by the
unions, it has not interrupted in spite of the victims it is causing.
The last
case was the one suffered by Aldo Saavedra, who lost part of a finger
in an occupational accident at the Macul Nestle plant. Even though Aldo
took the protection out of the machine he was operating, the cause of the
accident goes beyond a worker's mistake. Aldo had been working for
three weeks without any weekly day-off. On Saturday 2, he worked from 7 am
to 2 pm, and he went back to work that same day at 11 pm. His accident took
place on Sunday 3 at 3 am.
Apart from
the violations to the laws in force, to what extent the accident was
influenced by the succession of work-days without the weekly day-off? There
are many research works evidencing that this intensification of work leads
to more occupational accidents, cardiovascular diseases, stress, sleep
disorders and depressive disorders, of all of which Nestlé is or
should be aware.
Overtime as
an anti-union tool
It is so
urgent to produce under any circumstances that even on May 1st, the food
and cold storage facility was operating. Even though workers can choose to
work or not to work on a holiday, in fact, their real alternative is to go
to work or be fired. At the Labor Office there is a labor complaint
presented by Sindicato de Trabajadores Nº 1 de Nestlé Chile División H.R.,
the company is accused of having fired 20 unionized workers in 2008 and 16
unionized workers until March, 2009. All of them, with an indefinite working
agreement and some with 15 to 20 years of work in the company, were fired
invoking the dreadful article 161 of the Labor Code: “corporate needs”. From
the moment when they were dismissed and immediately replaced by new workers,
the supposed need became a clumsy and false allegation.
To top it
all, the union also reported a communication to workers with the photo of
Ms. Ivonne Avilés, Nestlé Macul Human Resources manager where,
in a clear anti-union action, the Union is blamed for the suspension of
overtime*. What Ms. Avilés does not state is that the monitoring
referred to under item 1 was demanded because she attempted to pay work
performed on Sunday 7 not as overtime, but as regular pay.
Now, this
lady risks that another labor complaint is presented because she ordered the
installation of closed circuit cameras in workers' dressing rooms. When
union leaders complained, the reply was: "don’t worry, they are not
connected".
Inappropriate health and
safety conditions
These are
the working conditions and the working environment at Nestlé Macul,
Chile. There are other inappropriate working conditions, to be dealt
with in another story coming soon, among others:
1)
Hydrogen peroxide, also known as bleach, is the chemical used for cleaning.
Since the air is not sufficiently renewed by the factory extractors, several
workers have been noticing that their hair is becoming “blond”. Beyond the
fact that workers might forcefully become blond, about the internal impact,
particularly for workers' respiratory systems, nothing is known yet.
2) For
cleaning purposes, chlorine is also used. When chlorine is mixed with
detergents, there is a reaction which workers call a “bomb”. If we consider
that chlorine was used as a weapon in the First World War and recently in
the Iraq War, calling it a bomb does not seem exaggerated at all.
3) In
some areas, workers need to lift near 80 kg, which is a clear violation of
the legal rules in force.
They call themselves
responsible without embarrassment
In spite of
the above abnormal situation, Nestlé Chile keeps pretending to be a
respectful company, particularly of the so-called corporate social
responsibility. Fernando del Solar, Nestlé Chile CEO,
was elected director of Acción RSE in 2007. Acción RSE is an
association which, according to its website, intends to “raise awareness,
mobilize and support companies for socially responsible business
management”. For it, one of its five areas of work is the promotion of
"working life quality" (sic). We assume that Mr. Del Solar has not
attended any of the meetings convened to deal with this area.
Also, as a
way to show the government areas of concern, Marigen Hornkohl,
Chile’s Minister of Agriculture, just visited Switzerland,
where she met Paul Bulcke, Nestlé CEO, and they discussed a
proposal that Nestlé joins an alliance with Dutch authorities (through
Unilever?) to establish a food innovation excellence center.
Pappalardo arrived and he
ordered to slog guts out
Carlos
Pappalardo
is an Argentinean engineer, who, in 2003, arrived in the Dominican
Republic, more concretely at the Nestlé plant of San Francisco
de Macorís. The regional management appointed him as general manager of
such factory against the opinion of the local management, under the argument
that new machinery was necessary and there was need to reduce the production
line stops. Soon Pappalardo began to show his authoritarian and
despotic personality, justified in his particular way to understand
authority: “if I negotiate I loose authority”. Workers used to call him
“little Hitler” and during his management period there were successive
unjustified and massive dismissals and disregard for labor rights. Working
conditions were not something to keep him awake, in 2003 a worker used to
report: “we work at 32º or 33º Celsius and noise levels are at 85… we change
our shirts four or five times a day, we even sweat when we are resting”.
Things
escalated so much that Pappalardo ceased to be a problem for the
union and became a problem for the civil society of San Francisco de Macorís.
In 2005, 200 grassroots leaders of the Foro Social Alternativo,
Duarte province, held a meeting in front of the Nestlé plant
(heavily surrounded by soldiers) in order to submit a document stating their
support to the union and demanding the reinstatement of workers unjustly
fired.
Pappalardo
abandoned the Dominican Republic as suddenly as he had arrived and we
lost track of him for more than one year. We know now that he spent that
time at some Nestlé office in Santiago, apparently with the intention
that we would forget about him. Now he just appeared as manager of the
Graneros** plant and it is good to know that we remember him.
Moreover,
we think he will soon set tongues wagging.
