The Minister of Industry, Energy and Mining, Elisa Facio, questioned the reopening of the multinational beer company National Breweries (FNC) at the beginning of this year due to the large Profits which he obtained in 2023 and the fact that they had not alerted the government before deciding to permanently close the Minas plant and leave workers without their jobs.
The hierarch brought the subject to the House of Representatives Labor Legislation Committee and stressed that helping a multinational is not a job that the government “loves to do.” Facio referred to the repeated meetings they had with the company and with various ministries in order to solve the problem.
“What I think is that, in some way, the company used the government as a consultant,” Facio said, referring to the fact that FNC had four ministries at its disposal behind its numbers trying to solve its financial problems so that its employees could keep their jobs.
Mismanagement
The official claimed that in the last two financial statements, for 2022 and 2023, they obtained profits of 16 and 8 million dollars respectively. “He came with a problem – because he does not understand that a private company would have to solve its problems with its own staff – and the reality that he had four ministers looking at his numbers to see how he could improve them,” she commented.
Regarding earnings, Facio He questioned the company’s problems. “One does not understand that a company that has so many profits has so many problems. So we considered different alternatives and then the company came,” he added.
On the other hand, he commented that in the first meeting with the ministries they did not say that they were planning to close the plant. Mines. “It was a bit strange for us because we received them a week before and they didn’t tell us anything,” he said, adding: “Later he told me: It was uncomfortable for us because when we went to the ministry we had already thought about that decision, but since it wasn’t definitively resolved, we didn’t tell them anything.”
Negotiating with jobs
Facio assured that if the closure of the plant were to be finalized, Mines, It would have been a major blow to the sector, although the company obtained the 40% reduction in its workforce – based on the agreement they reached – without any difficulty from the union. “They were not satisfied with this, although I think they obtained a lot, without any difficulty,” he commented.
“The problem that the company could have had if it had started to make all those layoffs would have been dramatic. It would really have led the entire sector to a mobilization. They are Argentines and everything is different,” he said. In that sense, from the perspective of the Executive, it is possible that FNC used the plant closure as part of the negotiation.
On the other hand, regarding the discount of the Imesi which had been previously agreed upon for FNC, Facio said that it is not still on the table. “You can imagine that the government is not going to make a decision that favors a multinational that, in addition, has 8 million dollars, which for them was little, but not for the companies that we serve,” he added.
Source: Ambito
