translated from Spanish: Walmart: the supermercadista’s accelerated efforts to avoid Chile’s biggest private strike

Requested by the Government and also by entrepreneurs, through the National Chamber of Commerce. I hope the Walmart workers and the company understand each other. As Labour Minister Nicolas Monckeberg said.
“I want to call for the parties to continue to engage in dialogue in the days before the strike materializes, to seek a solution as soon as possible and in line with the legitimate interests of both sides,” said Manuel Melero, president of the TNC. In the meantime, the Labour Minister noted that “we are hopeful that the parties will agree and there will be no paralysis.” Although it is a private negotiation, within the Government it has been pointed out that it is not good for the country environment to face such a massive paralysis of workers: 16 thousand employees of the firm have not come to terms with the company controlled by the Walton family .
These are mainly local workers from the Acuenta and Lider Express supermarket chains. While large venues would not be affected at an eventual standstill, the firm acknowledges that the Operation of Acuenta and Lider Express would feel the effects.
The problem is that so far they have not been understood even though close to the trafficking they claim that the knot of the conflict has two flanks: one, the viralization of a series of assertions on mass layoffs and also, they acknowledge, the politicization that has reached the movement, which has prevented further rapprochement between the parties.
The company’s mandate for now is to avoid strikeaction. Bentoville has wallet for that and relevant economic power. The U.S. retail chain, the world’s largest, announced on May 16 that it earned $3.842 million in the first quarter of its fiscal year, an 80% increase in profits compared to the same period last year. , according to a statement issued by the company.
The company this year has gone through not only tense negotiations in Chile, for example in Mexico negotiated with about 8,500 workers. The strike should have started today, but the company at the last minute stopped her requesting mediation, a mandatory five-day legal process that moves the day of tension to Tuesday.
The president of the company’s inter-company union, Juan Moreno, said he hopes the company’s proposal will not be a delaying move. “Strike is not a sport, it is a pressure tool to express a disagreement,” he said this morning in an interview with La Tercera TV.
Moreno, at this time, was initiating meetings with the company to start mediation, representing the 16,800 workers. The biggest point of disagreement has been the change in contracts, in relation to workers not having the exclusivity of dealing only in one area of the company.
That is to say, not only to be a cashier or winemaker, but to assume multiplicity of functions. On the part of the union, they point out that it is unaware of a previous agreement in recent years that agreed not to move workers from their usual duties.
Moreno added that in that context the negotiation should have been simple, but it all got complicated along the way. Indeed, they had previously signed a transformation agreement to mediate the change in labour claims.
The ball, now, is on the side of the company. This, for the union’s position is to consider that deadlines are still running and that only the start day “July 10 thaingoes,” Moreno said. From the company as long as they claim that there is serious willingness to come to an agreement.
Among the advisers of the process, are on the part of the workers, in addition to the CUT, the former undersecretary of labor of Michelle Bachelet’s government, Francisco Díaz.

Original source in Spanish