The Supreme Court rejected the unification appeal filed by Walmart Chile SA after trying to remove the President of the Interempresa Leader of Workers Union, Juan Moreno, who had issued statements against the company.
The request for immunity was presented after Moreno, who was also Vice President of the Unitary Central of Workers (CUT), accuse the company of pressuring its workers to vote for the candidate José Antonio Kast during the 2021 presidential elections.
The events occurred on December 18 of that same year, two days before the votes, when Moreno uploads an 11-second video to his X account (formerly Twitter) confirming such complaints and encouraging sharing the publication, as indicated in the first instance ruling.
“URGENT We have received complaints that administrators of @Walmart__Chile are pressuring workers to vote for Kast and we are not surprised because we know that Lucía Avilés, married to one of the owners of the multinational in the US, is its main financier.”
After the publication, various news portals replicated the information, and even the now President Gabriel Boric and the current minister of the General Secretariat of Government, Camila Vallejo, retweeted the video.
On December 19, the company issued a statement in which They denied Moreno’s accusations, ensuring that they had “provided the facilities so that all our collaborators can exercise their right to vote accordingly.”
However, in his defense, the defendant stated that these accusations he made to the company are based on “information provided by the workers themselves of the trade union and trade union organizations it represents.
Furthermore, he points out that the owners of the company have «been the largest financiers of political campaigns, highlighting» and even the wife of one of them, Lucía Avilés, «The politician has expressed his financial support for the candidate José Kast» fact that has also been reported by the media.
Along the same lines, he assures that his statements cannot be considered insults because they obey “to the exercise of the fundamental right of freedom of association, both individually and collectively«.
Meanwhile, he could not provide the names of those who confessed this practice by the company. because he fears they will be fired.
In the first instance ruling they concluded that “the statements of the worker, whose immunity is requested, They cannot be considered as any insult since their expressions fall within the framework of the exercise lawfulness of their union representation work.
Therefore, on March 6, 2023, the Second Labor Court of Santiago denied merit to the lawsuit issued by the company, arguing that “freedom of expression is invoked in the context of union activity.
Not satisfied with the ruling, the company went to the Court of Appeals of Santiago to have the lawsuit accepted and be able to fire the worker, however, the appeal for annulment was rejected.
The Court ratifies that “the freedom of opinion or to express an opinion (…) can be understood as “the fundamental right that every person has to express what they think, know or feel”.
