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SAN CARLOS DE BARILOCHE.- After the threat launched on Thursday at the massive assembly in Añelo, the Union of Private Oil Workers of Río Negro, Neuquén and La Pampa confirmed that it will strike for 48 hours and that production will be affected. The measure will begin next Tuesday and will paralyze activity in Vaca Muerta.
In the union he leads Marcelo Rucci They indicated that, as there was no “concrete progress on the claimed salary issue”, starting on Tuesday the 18th they will carry out “a direct action measure affecting production and for a period of 48 hours, with the entire jurisdictional scope of this union, without prejudice to its possible expansion.”
They added that it is found “the deadline for the conciliatory management has already expired” and that from the union they have opted “for good faith and dialogue”, but they did not achieve the parity they wanted.
After Thursday’s meeting between the union and the Chamber of Hydrocarbon Production Companies (CEPH) and the Chamber of Special Oil Operations Companies (Ceope), Rucci had warned: “There comes a point when the thread ends up cutting. We have been verbose and we have given the necessary arguments, but the answers are not there. If the solution to this is through forceful measures and having to break the negotiating table because there is no criterion to be able to resolve, it will have to be like this”.
Specifically, last week the oil tankers rejected the restitution of the fourth category of Income Tax, and they asked that the situation of industry workers with salaries below the basic basket be regularized.
Although the Base Law restored the fourth category of Income Tax, after the vote in the Senate with a majority against, the issue returns to the Chamber of Deputies for its new treatment. The minimum rate proposed was 5% of net profit and increased to 35% according to income level.
“Years ago we had the compensatory for colleagues who do not generate overtime, but never paid it. So we said ‘we are going to regulate this, we are going to make the writing clear, white on black’. The worker has to earn at least as much money to avoid falling below the poverty line,” said Rucci.
The union leader explained that the business chambers proposed that It would be the workers who earn the most who are in charge of that compensatory fund. “Do we have the face of an idiot?” Rucci stated during the assembly in the Neuquén town of Añelo.
In the union they warned that there are workers, such as those who work in the refinery, who are below the poverty line. They are the so-called “eight-hour workers,” who receive salaries below the basic basket line, between $600,000 and $800,000.
“An oilman is below the poverty line. By hook or by crook, we’re going to fix it.. There will not be an oil tanker that has to go through that type of needs. They are responsible. They’re going to have to fix this mess. And I hope we fix it this week. Because if not, next week we will be on strike,” Rucci said.
The leader also compared the Argentine industry with what happens in the Permian Basin of the United States, the main shale region in the world. “Our workforce is first class, but the pay is second class. A worker in Permian initially earns 35,000 dollars a year, we do not reach 20. We pay their taxes, they do not dare to go to the government and say ‘don’t take 35% of my profits, leave me 25%, like they do in the United States,” said Rucci.
He added that the issue of income tax It is a fight that the oil tankers have lost with previous governments as well.. “If I share something with the President of the Nation, it is that in the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies It’s full of filthy rats. Because we elected him to defend the interests of Argentines and workers. And look how they pay us,” he stated.
In that sense, the union leader stressed that they will work to have their own representatives in politics. “Today the Senate of the Nation and the Chamber of Deputies are employees of corporations. We need to have people inside. And you know why we need to have people inside? Because we have very drinkable people. They don’t want you to be there because the worker, the one who does his job well, has convictions,” Rucci said.
And he closed: “None of you are going to betray a teammate after having shared situations every day in the field. And when one can accomplish a task, we have to return to the plain. So let’s start occupying the spaces ourselves. Because it is not about political parties. “It is about the presence in defense of the workers.”
