The Pauny crisis worsened after a hearing in Córdoba failed: workers are still occupying the Las Varillas plant and some 50 employees have taken over the La Banda facility. A new hearing has been set for November 12.
The Pauny crisis deepened this Thursday with the failure of a new hearing convened by the Córdoba Secretariat of Labor, which ended without progress between the board of the tractor factory and the Unión Obrera Metalúrgica (UOM). Workers have been occupying the main plant in Las Varillas since Tuesday and the conflict has spread to Santiago del Estero, where about 50 employees are occupying the La Banda branch.
The meeting had raised expectations of unblocking weeks of growing conflict, but according to the UOM, the company again showed up without a concrete plan to clear the wage debts or details on how it will sustain operations. The consequence was a ratification of the work stoppage and of the operators' continued presence inside the plant.
Minutes before the hearing, the board circulated a statement in which it acknowledged going through a situation of "extreme financial difficulty" and defended the steps taken to preserve jobs. "Throughout all this time, the company sought to preserve every source of work, even at the cost of significant economic sacrifices, trusting in a market recovery that unfortunately did not occur," it said.
For the union, the document does not match what happened in previous meetings nor does it constitute a payment proposal. "At no point did the company state concretely how it would pay the wages owed (which keep growing)," the UOM said.
"A very distressing situation, a situation bordering on desperation. But well, here we are with our co-workers, we are still inside the factory," described the general secretary of the UOM in San Francisco, Lucas Sarmiento. "We are not going to leave until we have concrete answers about how they are going to go on. And the workers are inside defending their jobs," he added. "The only way they'll get us out of here is feet first," he stressed.
The most controversial point of the statement was the claim that the company had presented a proposal to partially alleviate the situation, with funds from the sale of two nearly finished tractors. Sarmiento rejected that version: "We came out again without any kind of proposal, just a statement that, truthfully, we found very offensive."
"The company said the same thing again, nothing at all, it has no kind of proposal regarding the wage debt it has with the workers, it simply limited itself to words. We told the company that we want money for the workers urgently. And afterwards, from that point on, we can start talking about reactivating the company," he said.
In La Banda, the plant Pauny operates in Santiago del Estero was taken over by its 50 workers on Wednesday. According to journalist Melina Pivetta, the provincial police raised the tension and demanded that the measure be lifted, which the employees rejected, although they were forced to remove the sign reading "Fábrica tomada" (Factory occupied).
The conflict at that branch has dragged on since June, when the workers accepted a scheme of partial suspensions agreed between the company, the UOM and the Ministry of Labor: they stopped working Mondays and Tuesdays, and the company committed to paying 70% of the daily wage for those two shifts. "We used to work Wednesday, Thursday and Friday," explained worker Oscar Díaz.
According to Díaz, the company stopped honoring the agreement: deposits began arriving irregularly and in the last four weeks they received no money. To that was added the non-payment of the health insurance. "The kids can't get medical care, the children of our co-workers, and the workers themselves can't either, because the health plan doesn't cover them," he said.
Another worker, identified as Franco, described the employees' economic decline: "There are many co-workers who rent, there are many co-workers who are the breadwinners and it's not enough." "The workers are willing to negotiate, we just want them to pay us what we're owed, nothing more," he said.
The union demanded full payment of the wages owed, the reinstatement of three dismissed workers and a concrete plan for production continuity. "We are asking for the immediate reinstatement of three of our co-workers who have been dismissed without any cause whatsoever, because the situation has nothing to do with the dismissals," Sarmiento stated.
The UOM considers that the dismissals constitute retaliation for those employees' union activity. It also warned that the material conditions to resume production are currently not in place: "The workers are willing to work, but inside the company there is nothing, no material, no supplies, there is absolutely nothing."
The severity of the conflict is also explained by Pauny's weight in Las Varillas, where its activity has a knock-on effect on suppliers, shops and services. Sarmiento spoke of more than a thousand people affected, counting workers and their families. "Here there are families, here there are more than a thousand souls behind this, because it is not only the direct workers but the entire productive fabric of Las Varillas," he explained.
The union leader described the social consequences of the wage arrears: "There are co-workers who have been evicted, there are co-workers whose door debt collectors knock on every day, when we have co-workers who are drowning in bank debt, because throughout this whole period they kept going further into debt, and now it has been more than two months since they have had a peso in their pocket."
Sarmiento said that staying in the plant responds to the need to protect jobs and that the possibility of an administration run by the workers themselves, as in the 2001 crisis, was analyzed. "We and the workers are going to stay inside the company for as long as necessary. We do not take this issue, this action, as an act of irresponsibility, or of haste, or anything. We had been working on this for a long time, we knew that at some point it was going to come. The moment has come and here we are," he said. "I brought my bag from San Francisco, and I am going to leave with the workers or feet first," he stated.
The Córdoba Secretariat of Labor set a new hearing for Thursday, November 12 at 10, with the aim of Pauny complying with the summons issued by the union. Until then, the workers will remain inside the factory.
The crisis comes in a context of sharp contraction in the agricultural machinery market, falling sales and growing competition from imported tractors, especially of Chinese origin. Pauny, presented for years as one of the emblems of the national tractor industry, now faces difficulties in sustaining its activity and meeting its labor commitments.
