Damien Kantor
05/03/2021 17:15
Clarín.com
Economy
Updated 05/03/2021 17:15
Finally, the Truckers union and Walmart reached an agreement
after several months of frustrated negotiations, tensions and threats of force measures
.
Although the details are unknown, both parties resolved a conflict, based on the only distribution center that the chain has in the town of Moreno and in which
500 members of the union led by Hugo Moyano work
.
In the early hours of the afternoon, the company, which today belongs to Francisco De Narváez, and the union agreed to
pay a compensatory bonus
, the amount of which was not disclosed, in exchange for avoiding forceful measures at its distribution center. Both parties wrote their communiqués to announce the end of the extensive arm wrestling.
The lynchpin of the fight is De Narváez's purchase of Walmart last November. For this reason, the union demanded that logistics employees be compensated and retained with the same seniority, something that the company considered illegal and "
not provided for by any current legal framework
." The conflict was exposed at the end of March, with the publication of a requested one in the major national media, entitled "Everything within the law, nothing outside the law." And that it received the support of various business associations.
To stop protests, the Ministry of Labor, led by Claudio Moroni,
issued the mandatory conciliation
, first for 15 and then for another week, to force the parties to negotiate, without achieving progress or results. At the end of the term, two extensions were agreed to continue the dialogue with the same end.
Last Thursday, the company and the union ended the negotiations
. "It was a dialogue of the deaf. The union maintained its claim to compensate and retake the 500 employees for the change of ownership and the company considers this to be illegal. None changed their position and the conflict returns to zero," explained a source aware of the negotiations.
From one end to another, there were 39 days of a fight based on a union claim, which refers to the "Manliba case", and which is known as
the "Moyano Law"
. For Truckers, it is an acquired right even if it is not contemplated in the labor legislation. In the 90s and when the concession of the waste collection company (which belonged to the Socma group of the Macri family) expired, Moyano agreed to pay the dismissals and keep their jobs in the successive renewals of the concession contracts. The formula was replicated with logistics, postal and carbonated water companies, among others.
Walmart described the order as illegal, from the outset. For the amount involved (compensation of 500 workers) and for the possible derivations of doing so. It is the 4th most important supermarket chain in the country, it has 92 branches and around 10,000 employees. "To
pay was to open a Pandora's box,
because later other unions could claim the same," reasoned a source linked to the company.
