30 July, 2009Within the framework of the IMF project to strengthen its trade union affiliates in Chile, a week of workshops focused on collective bargaining and the current labour and trade union situation of the country's workers.
CHILE: One national and three regional workshops have been held in Chile as part of the IMF project to strengthen affiliated trade unions in Chile. The project's main objective is to strengthen metalworking trade unions, promote cooperation between affiliated trade unions at the national level and strengthen trade union unity.
Participants at the national workshop, held in Santiago on July 29, analysed the results of the regional workshops (Antofagasta, Concepción and Santiago), which focused on collective bargaining, evaluated trade union participation in the project and identified the issues to be dealt with at forthcoming meetings. They concluded that the discussions and exchange of information generated by the workshops were positive and emphasised the importance of unity for achieving project objectives.
Marino Vani, IMF assistant regional representative and project coordinator, explained that the workshop's objective was to analyse trade union negotiations and the current situation in Chile so that at forthcoming meetings they could go on to develop proposals to deal with the problems facing trade unionism at the national level.
Participants at the workshops stressed the importance of negotiating collective agreements by company and sector and a national collective agreement for the metalworking sector as a whole. They hope these objectives can be achieved by strengthening the trade unions but warned that structural and cultural changes to trade unionism are required as well as changes to national legislation that would guarantee national collective bargaining, remove restrictions on the right to strike and the repeal of laws that promote the atomisation of the trade union movement.
The IMF project to strengthen trade unions, implemented with the support of the Swedish trade union IF Metall, and which is also being implemented in Colombia, is to consolidate and strengthen affiliated trade unions in a context in which workers in these two countries have encountered problems in building their unions and achieving unity.