14 September, 2010Thousands of auto workers take action in support of their demand for a nine per cent wage increase.
BRAZIL: Thirteen thousand workers from carmakers in Sao Bernardo do Campo attended meetings, protests and strikes on September 13 as part of partial warning actions called by the ABC Metalworkers' Union, affiliated to CNM/CUT, in support of their demands for a nine per cent wage increase.
The autoworkers are seeking a similar agreement as reached by 210,000 workers in other metal sectors on September 4, including a wage increase of nine per cent. With inflation running at 4.29 per cent, the nine per cent increase represented a real increase of 4.52 per cent, the largest real increase in the last ten years.
The auto workers' protest actions shut down production from 5:15am to 10am, at various times at each factory. Over 6,000 workers at Volkswagen delayed entry to attend the meeting in the morning.
At Ford, the first shift (4,500 workers) did not enter at 6:00am, instead they waited for the arrival of the non-manual workers at 8:00am, and only came to work at 9:00am.
Already at the Mercedes-Benz plant, 2,500 employees participated in the assembly and demonstrations, which began at 5:00am and only returned to work at 10:00am.
The metalworkers in the auto sector in the industrial region known as ABC are in a state of strike since Saturday, by unanimous decision of the workers' assembly held by the union where the companies' offer of a seven per cent salary increase was rejected.
On Monday, at 1:00 pm, the union delivered to Sinfavea (the employers' representative organization for the carmakers) notice of the strike action. The notice reports that after 48 hours, all 40,000 workers may go on to hold an indefinite general strike in Sao Bernardo, Taubaté, Sao Carlos and Tatuí.