The participants from South America were:

Brazil: Erlon Souza Lorentz, Confederação Nacional dos Trabalhadores Metalúrgicos, Força Sindical (CNTM/FS) and Marcio Bonotto, Confederação Nacional dos Metalúrgicos, Central Única dos Trabalhadores (CNM/CUT)

Argentina: Javier González, Unión Obrera Metalúrgica (UOM) and Héctor de Dominisca, Unión Obrera Metalúrgica (UOM)

Chile: Alex Molina Figueroa, Patricio Aguilera Milla, Nelson Lazo Inostroza, Manuel Bascur Astete, Cristian Pereira, Ignacio Avedaño Cortes, Juan González Leiva and Miguel Soto from the Sindicato Nacional de la Industria Manufacturera de Chile.

Kan Matsuzaki explained the specific situation at Siemens. There is a Global Framework Agreement (GFA) of IndustriAll with Siemens and a global union network is starting to work. He also described the implementation process of the Siemens GFA and informed about the various meetings that already have taken place under this agreement.

The participants of the meeting exchanged their experiences at Siemens. All participants expressed especially their worries about the political developments in their home countries. Union and workers´ rights are under attack by the governments. In their reports, the union representatives pointed out, that the GFA is unknown at the most Siemens locations in South America. The representatives from Chile criticized the wage differences between the locations and in some cases also bad working conditions and unsufficient medical care for the workers.

The participants agreed on the following steps to strengthen their further cooperation:

-       There are contact persons for each represented country, who will form a “WhatsApp” group.

-       IndustriAll will send a questionnaire to each contact person to collect all necessary information from each country where Siemens is represented in South America.

-       The participants and their unions will exchange information about wages, working conditions, benefits, health and safety issues, vocational training and precarious work at their locations.

Kan Matsuzaki also informed about the union situation at other countries of the region, especially about the situation at Mexico and Colombia. In Mexico, there are many employer-sponsored, undemocratic unions. In Colombia, the unions have no access to the Siemens site at Tenjo. IndustriAll will continue its efforts to change this.

(Report: Dirk Linder)