Poultry Workers on Strike in Brazil

Nick Shields: Global Labor Production. November 21, 2008 11:17 am
Workers at the Cargill-owned Seara poultry plant in Mato Gosso do Sul, Brazil have been on Strike since November 10th due to the company proposal of 10 percent monetary compensation for work in difficult and unhealthy conditions, half of the 20 percent that the Brazilian Supreme Labor Court calls for. Many workers at the plant work in constant temperatures of 12 degrees centigrade. At this same plan in March of 2007 a 29 year old maintenance worker was killed after being sliced in half when he fell into a tank in the chilling unit. The management called his death a suicide and refused to give compensation.
Additional demands include a 3 percent premium for workers working in slaughtering, 36 hour work weeks, reduced line speeds and more frequent brakes. The company has used police and security guards to try to pressure the strikers to return to work. Some 2,600 workers, 90 percent of the workforce, are on strike. Sixty percent of the workers in the plant are women, and 30 percent of the workers are from the indigenous Teranas tribe.
I think that the Seara Poultry Plant should at least consider restarting the negotiations about the monetary compensation for working conditions. I'm sure that after a certain point the money that the company is losing by not having 90 percent of it's labor will be greater than the amount of money it would cost them to just give the workers the compensation. The workers also have to be very careful that they do not lose there jobs completely. I do not know what the demand for jobs is in that area but I am sure that the company could find new workers if they had to. There is no question that the management of the plant is not morally sound, so they would not hesitate to fire people without compensation. At some point, one of the sides, which should be the plant, has to give in to the demands of the other. The plant should at least give the workers the 20 percent compensation that the Supreme Labor Court calls for.
http://www.iuf.org/cgi-bin/dbman/db.cgi?db=default&uid=default&ID=5497&view_records=1&ww=1&en=1