2023-11-17 16:16:07
By: Jorge Luis Souto Maior
Published in the blog by Jorge Luiz Souto Maior
The Metropolitan Company of São Paulo, Metrô-SP, definitely does not do well with the logic of social dialogue when the interlocutors are the people who carry out their entrepreneurship, by carrying out their work.
Ora, it is not the first time that a metro rail strike in São Paulo
It ends in punishments, by the company, of the workers involved in the strike.
In 2007, days after the strike that began on August 2 and 3, the Metro fired 61 workers.
The 2014 strike resulted in the dismissal of 42 subway workers, many of whom even lived this experience twice, because, due to the decision issued by Judge Thiago Melosi Sória, head of the 34th Labor Court of São Paulo , on August 27, the dismissals were canceled, and when an injunction, issued in the Court, annulled the decision, those who had been reinstated were fired again, this time, with the perversity of carrying out the same on Christmas Eve ( Dec. 24).
All the workers fired in 2014 and who tried to reverse the situation were reinstated in 2018, with the Labor Court definitively declaring that the Metro had committed an anti-union act by promoting the aforementioned dismissals.
At the time (2014), the Metro had already used illegal work to try to maintain activities during the strike, sending 220 telegrams to the train drivers, to induce them to report to work, being that, in the terms of § 2., of art. 6° of Law no. 7,783, is “companies are prohibited from adopting means to order employees to attend work, as well as those that could frustrate the dissemination of the movement”.
Now, in 2023, history repeats itself, demonstrating not only a lack of respect for the right to strike but also for the repeated decisions of the Labor Court regarding retaliation carried out in previous strikes.
This time, after the strike last October 3, 8 (eight) subway workers were summarily dismissed, almost all union leaders and members of the CIPA, one of them being the vice president of the union and 1 (one) suspended for 28 days. .
The argument used for the dismissals is that they participated in the category’s fight against privatization, more precisely, in the acts of mobilization that aimed to prevent the company from devising ways to keep the trains running, even during the strike. . Specifically, many of those sanctioned were involved in an act of resistance, which began at the beginning of this year, against the implementation of a “contingency plan,” characterized by the training that train operators would have to provide to employees in positions managers and supervisors of other areas of the company, so that they were authorized to operate the trains on the day of the strike.
This is, by the way, a strategy to frustrate the exercise of the right to strike and is, therefore, illegal, in addition to generating an enormous risk for the population, since, even with some training, these people are not properly qualified and Furthermore, they are small in number.
But not only that. On the night of 10/11, the day before the holiday, Metro began delivering early morning warnings to train operators.
Faced with the situation of reprisals, the train operators carried out a new and strong mobilization, self-organized by the base, which had the support of the Union.
The demonstration was suspended after the company’s commitment that there would be a negotiation meeting on the sanctions, giving a guarantee that there would be no punishment for this mobilization, but no prior warning was withdrawn and on 10/24 the aforementioned layoffs began. , which affected workers from all lines, including the directors of the union and its vice president.
It is clear, therefore, that the punishments aim to affect the full exercise of the right to strike as an instrument of struggle of the working class to defend its interests, which implies, in this case, the rejection of the transportation privatization process. and sanitation.
Therefore, the Metro Workers Union is absolutely right in explaining that the dismissals and sanctions in question have an openly political nature, constituting an anti-union act, with the clear objective of weakening the workers’ struggle and creating divisions in the category. which, it is worth remembering, at least since 2014, has been a vanguard in the general interest struggles of the working class, and this time it has been on the front line against the privatizations announced by the state government, and in defense of public transportation of quality and at the service of the population.
The 2023 strike was even triggered in a unified act with the CPTM workers [trenes urbanos] and SABESP [agua y saneamiento].
And it never hurts to remember that all people, including, of course, workers in their respective legal employment relationships, are granted a fundamental guarantee of resisting an attack on their rights, dignity and physical and mental integrity. moral. The legitimacy of resistance to injustice is not conditional on the application of a specific legal norm that delimits when and how the reaction should occur.
Regarding privatization, it is general knowledge that the privatization of public services has already demonstrated its high costs for the treasury, since it constitutes an open door to corruption and overbilling, in addition to leading to a deterioration of public services and More importantly, in a progressive precariousness of working conditions, especially with the promotion of outsourcing, which implies the integration of new private companies in the provision of public services, transformed into “entrepreneurship”, and generating new costs for the State. , derived from liability for illegalities committed by these companies towards consumers and workers, as well as towards the environment.
At this moment, there are two auctions underway, one that outsources service at the stations and another that outsources the maintenance of trains on Line 15 Prata. [Plata] monorriel.
It is of utmost importance, therefore, that all people and entities that seek to build a country in which, at least the public services, which constitute basic rights of citizenship, are provided with quality, in an environment in which where democracy is breathed and lived and the fundamental and social rights of workers are respected, join the campaigns and mobilizations for the immediate reversal of the injustice experienced by these people who fought and continue to fight for respect for their rights and for the interests of all of us.
In this way, we can only say: no to privatizations and reprisals against workers in the Metro!
Published with the authorization of Jorge Souto Maior.
Translation: Natalia Estrada.
#privatizations #reprisals #Metro #workers