4 November, 2021Following intense campaigning for employees illegally dismissed during the pandemic, Electrolux workers in Chile and Mexico, have reached agreements. This is thanks to the dialogue between IndustriALL, Swedish unions and the company.
In Chile, workers from unions 1 and 2 at Compañía Tecno Industrial (CTI S.A.), owned by Swedish multinational Electrolux, have brought an end to their long fight for the right to collective bargaining.
In a ruling on 14 June, the Santiago employment court unanimously rejected the company's initial proposal, which was simply to maintain the bargaining floor and pay a termination bonus and an additional union contribution. In the ruling, the court expressed its disappointment that it had taken seven months for Electrolux to deliver such a weak proposal, which was also rejected because the multinational had failed to comply with the original collective bargaining deadlines.
Even though company management and the union are still at loggerheads, workers decided to come to an agreement with Electrolux because the process was dragging on and the costs of the legal battle were mounting.
On 26 October in Mexico, a settlement was reached with the six dismissed workers who had refused to accept voluntary resignation and had taken the case to court. This was after 18 months and many meetings between Electrolux management in Sweden and the USA, IndustriALL, and Swedish union Unionen on behalf of the works council. The workers had not received any compensation for their unfair dismissal from Electrolux's plant in Ciudad Juárez in April 2020.
However, Electrolux did not offer the workers full compensation for their unfair dismissal or agree to pay the wages due since the dismissal date. Even though they did not obtain everything they had asked for, the workers signed the agreement in order to at last bring an end to the situation and avoid spending another year in the courts. The six workers received their compensation cheques on 29 October.
"We are happy that settlements have been reached in both cases. We will continue our dialogue with the Swedish unions and Electrolux and seek ways to improve dialogue and working conditions through our global framework agreement,"
said IndustriALL assistant general secretary Kan Matsuzaki.