ROSARIO.-For some time now, the Santa Fe Truckers Union has been seeking to make a difference with the national leadership of the union, in the hands of Hugo and Pablo Moyano. The dissonance this time lies in the position of not joining or supporting a strike that threatens to be launched at the national level by the entity that brings together the drivers in the face of the resistance of the Minister of Economy, Luis Caputoto approve this year’s salary increase.
Sergio Aladio, head of the union in Santa Fe, stated that in this province the majority of companies paid the 25 percent salary increase in March and will do so, according to estimates, with the 20 percent that is agreed for April. “We do not agree with a measure of force at this time. The thick harvest is coming and it is going to be very good this year, unlike previous ones, and we cannot paralyze activity at this time, when most of the companies in Santa Fe have already complied with the payment of the salary increase,” said Aladio. in dialogue with THE NATIONwho believes that unionism will have to “use ingenuity, with new strategies,” so that in this context workers recover their lost purchasing power.
The position of the Santa Fe Truck Drivers Guild has weight in the national context, because it is the second largest affiliate after the province of Buenos Aires, with about 25,000 members. The position that Aladio proposes of distancing himself from the national leadership is not new. The leader became general secretary in Santa Fe after an extensive conflictive process in that union, which began with the crime of Abel Beroiz in 2007, the result of a bloody internal conflict.
Marcelo Dainotto was Beroiz’s successor and became deputy secretary of Moyano in the Truck Drivers Federation, but had to leave his position in 2014 due to irregularities in the management of union funds. The justice system seized $2,000,000 from different safe deposit boxes. When Moyano wanted to appoint a new head of the Santa Fe Truckers Union, a sector of the leadership opposed it. The fight ended with elections in 2016 in which, despite Moyanista resistance, Aladio won. The first thing he did was disaffiliate his union from the federation.
This new chapter of the differences between Moyano and Aladio appears at a time when the Truck Drivers Federation will define this Thursday in a national congress, where it hopes to summon 20,000 workers from the different branches, if it moves forward with a 48-hour general strike in the face of the refusal. of the government to approve the joint agreement that the union signed with the business chambers for the months of March and April.
The call was promoted by Moyano, who points to part of the business community, “influenced and extorted by sectors linked to Macrismo and the libertarian government” to judicialize the salary agreements. “A company that does not pay, an activity that does not work,” stated the trucker leader.
Aladio has been trying to show another side of the sector that is key to the production of the country that transports its goods along the routes. The leader pointed out that the salary agreement was signed in this province by the different chambers of the sector, with which this month the truck drivers already received a first part of the 25 percent salary increase. There remains in April 20. “This is an agreement between the parties, which obliges them to settle the increase in receipts and pay it to the workers. The approval of which there is so much talk occurs in fact, after the deadline has expired, which is why it gives the agreement a universal nature,” the leader warned.
The government does not want to endorse the 45 percent increase in the parity due to the possibility, according to the vision of the Minister of Economy, that it will generate an effect in other branches and end up encouraging an increase in inflation. In the business chambers, one of the objections is the payment of a bonus of 10,000 pesos per worker to finance the deficit of social work, which was the target of funding cuts by the current administration.
In Santa Fe, the Camioneros subsidiary preferred to omit this bonus in the agreements that were signed with the business chambers. “In this province the 10,000 peso bonus should not be paid, since it was not signed between the parties. This produces savings for workers and businessmen in the provincial sector that would exceed 240,000,000 pesos per month,” Aladio warned.
The union leader explained that “since April 6 and with a large part of the salaries settled in the more than 4,500 companies in the province, it was determined that the increase was paid in a very high percentage in the sector. We only have a couple of companies left that will surely end up paying it.” Given this scenario, Aladio stated that “a strike does not make sense.” “Activity is beginning to move in the agro-export sector and we need workers and companies to be able to recover some ground in the face of the bad economic situation we are going through,” he stated.
Aladio pointed out that in this context “unions must start thinking about smarter strategies, always thinking about the benefit of the workers. Today, blocking a plant or picketing can end up playing against us, so we have to think about other resources, such as, for example, resorting to justice in the event of a maneuver that seeks to harm workers.”