The authorities of the Bridgestone company and the leaders of the Tire Workers Union They will meet again this week at a meeting called for prevent a conflict from breaking out which can affect the entire industry.
Contact will be through a virtual audience that the Ministry of Labor of the Nation convened to this Wednesday, January 29 at 11 a.m..
Officials face a dilemma that is difficult to resolve through administrative means: they have to define if they accept or reject a request made by the multinational to reopen the Crisis Preventive Procedure approved and applied in October 2024.
At that time, the exception mechanism that allows companies to apply adjustment measures to face crisis situations allowed Bridgestone get rid of 450 employeesaccording to the complaints made by the Single Union of Tire Workers of Argentina (SUTNA).
Now, the company wants Labor to authorize an extension of that regime to apply new cutsboth in its production levels and in the number of employees, to adapt its activity to the fall in demand that he has been facing since last year, according to his arguments.
This Wednesday’s hearing has the character of “previous” to the final hearing where the Secretary of Labor will announce his verdict. The intention is to continue adding elements of analysis to the task of Crisis Unitthe technical evaluation group that must be issued on the company’s order.
In any case, no one from the company or the union expects there to be new elements to consider. Each part will once again announce its arguments without moving an inch from his script.
The arguments of the parties in conflict
The company bases its position on a situation that takes as a precedent the extensive union conflict of 2022, which – it assures – deteriorated the export base of its business and that still has repercussions on its operation.
“The business and the market are challenging and the outlook for 2025 looks even more difficultwhich forces us to be realistic about the current situation of the company and evaluate the possible steps that can be taken to optimize the structure and reprioritize key projects,” he stated.
For its part, the union issued a statement regarding this new hearing in which it anticipated: “The SUTNA will attend this hearing demanding that it be rejected as illegal and inadmissible “This request for the expansion of PPC that does not exist as a legal figure in the Argentine Republic.”
It also alleges that the company “asks the Ministry of Labor authorized to illegally dismiss 290 workers and threatens to move forward with breaking the Collective Agreement, implementing a salary reduction and making workers more flexible once the dismissals are implemented.”
What SUTNA will try to demonstrate is that “the multinational Bridgestone, the largest tire manufacturing and sales company in the world and the main tire importer in Argentina, It has a wide number of solutions in the case of a supposed setback in your local economic equations (which is not noted in the positive balances presented) without affecting jobs and working conditionsas well as the possibility of reaching agreements with the government without threatening workers.”
The union members will also raise at the hearing, among other arguments, that the company During the pandemic, it managed to sustain its employee complement despite operating with a minimum level of production.
“Bridgestone absurdly indicates, on the one hand, not needing high levels of production, and on the other It is the factory with the most hours worked by each worker weeklyreaching the top of the limit of 48 per week,” they added. And they added: “In other countries, Bridgestone itself has rotated the effective work days of hundreds of workers without executing dismissals.”
The union remains in a state of alert and mobilization. Last Thursday he called a rally at the gates of the Llavallol factory, which was attended by representatives of other companies in the tire industry.
Source: Ambito
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