The president of the Uruguayan Federation of Commerce and Services Employees (Fuecys), Fabio Riverón, said that the main reason is technological changes.
The Uruguayan Federation of Commerce and Services Employees (Fuecys) reported that in the last two years, a thousand jobs were lost in supermarkets in all the country. Technological changes and the automation of tasks are one of the main reasons.
The president of Fuecys, Fabio Riverón, explained “the technological changes and its impact on employment is the present, not the future,” and warned that “that has already arrived and we have lost time that should have been dedicated to retraining workers.”
His comment to the Informativo Uruguay program was due to the fact that the union warned about the loss of a thousand jobs in supermarkets during the last two years. Much of this happened due to what happened at the Tata firm: “They acquired other smaller chains in different parts of the country, incorporated new ways of working and technologywhich led to a demand for less labor,” explained the union leader.
In any case, he added that in the rest of the sector, “employment is stable,” although he noted that the National Institute of Employment and Vocational Training (Inefop)“it should not focus only on those workers who lose their jobs, but also on those who are working today but it is imminent that technological change will displace them.”
The wholesale and retail trade sector in general, according to figures from the Social Security Bank (BPS), has increased contributing positions by approximately 10,000 workers in the last year. For the union leader, “this increase has occurred especially due to the opening of small businesses, In many cases it is about generating a job opportunity after being left without work in another sector,” he said.
Riverón highlighted that commerce and services is the sector where a good part of the “twenty-five thousand-pounders” which is reported in a recent report by the Cuesta Duarte Institute of the PIT-CNT.
Source: Ambito
