The meeting held by the Ministry of Transportation, led by Diego Giuliano, leaders of the Automotive Tramway Union (UTA), which are holding tasks for 24 hours, and the business chambers of the sector went to a intermediate roomafter just over two hours of negotiations to unlock the conflict, government and union sources confirmed.
The Automotive Tramway Union (UTA) began at 0 this Friday a 24-hour cessation of tasks at the national level in the short and medium distance services of all the companies that “fail to pay the salary increase resolved and agreed” for those sectors and warned that it will not allow “pressure” from the employer sector to the Government, reported the union headed by Roberto Fernández.
The protest measure took place in the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Area (AMBA), the city of La Plata and the provinces of Corrientes, Entre Ríos, Santa Fe, Formosa and Tucumán.
In these districts, according to the union, “compliances in companies were verified” and, for that reason, a stoppage of activities was also announced.
For their part, the AMBA business chambers reported -through their Twitter account- that they had been summoned at 11:30 a.m. at the headquarters of the Ministry of Transportation to “find mechanisms to resolve the conflict,” together with the UTA.
For D’Onofrio “there is an intransigent position of the business community”
The Minister of Transportation of the province of Buenos Aires, Jorge D’Onofrio, affirmed that there is “an intransigent position” on the part of the collective business chambers and assured that “it is not a union conflict” the retention of tasks carried out by the UTA for 24 hours.
“It is not a union conflict, that was solved with an allocation of funds. It is a pressure from the employers to increase their profit. The employer took an indirect measure that is not to pay the salary increase when the money had been transferred, ” stressed the official in radio statements.
Likewise, he remarked that the center of the discussion “is in the profit of the companies that intend to recover a profit margin” but warned that “they are not the forms”.
“I agree with (the Minister of Labor, Raquel) Kelly Olmos. It is a concentrated group pushing the conflict. What is in the background is not the salary, but the profit of the businessmen. They have been recognized with higher costs in fuel and spare parts , but they want to discuss issues related to profit,” the minister explained.
For the official, the national government “cannot allow itself to be extorted” and opined that a process of “expiration of concessions” should be initiated.
In this sense, D’Onofrio denounced that these measures “are not for money”, but that they are being used as a “destabilizing maneuver” and added: “We see that they did not dare to carry out the bosses’ lockout and pushed the workers to take this decision”.
