Uruguay

On 8 November 2017, the federation of meat industry and associated workers FOICA (Federación Obrera de la Industria de Carne y Afines) declared a strike strike The most common form of industrial action, a strike is a concerted stoppage of work by employees for a limited period of time. Can assume a wide variety of forms.

See general strike, intermittent strike, rotating strike, sit-down strike, sympathy strike, wildcat strike and denounced the repeated anti-union measures at the companies Ersinal S.A., Frigorífico Solís and Ecocarnes/Broncelil. The Federation argued that the employers were taking advantage of the crisis in the sector to try to dismantle the workers’ trade union organisations and thus avoid having to negotiate with them. The workers and the National Department of Labour presented Ersinal S.A. and Frigorífico Solís with various proposals in a bid to resolve the crisis; they were rejected. Ecocarnes/Broncelil offered its employees money and pressured them to leave the trade union in exchange for keeping their jobs. On 21 December, Frigorífico Solís and the workers signed an agreement through which the trade union secured protection for its representatives. Four trade union representatives were reinstated.

The gas workers’ union Unión Autónoma de Obreros y Empleados del Gas, denounced MontevideoGas, a subsidiary of Petrobras, for firing one of its members. Fifty-five other workers were also dismissed, as part of what the company presented as essential restructuring, arguing that the pipeline gas business, conducted through the distributors MontevideoGas and Conecta, was no longer profitable. The company and the trade union have been negotiating since September 2017 to reach an agreement. The company’s focus has been on cost restructuring, which includes reducing labour costs and outsourcing outsourcing See contracting-out a number of services. Until December 2017, the trade union rejected the plan, arguing that the company’s real motive for outsourcing outsourcing See contracting-out services was to be able to dismiss the direct employees and thus dismantle the trade union.

On 2 November 2017, the executive secretary of the PIT-CNT (Plenario Intersindical de Trabajadores – Convención Nacional de Trabajadores) rejected the dismissal by Artigas of a municipal worker, immediately after he was elected as a representative of the trade union. Fernando Silveira was dismissed in September 2017 after working for the company for 11 years, without ever receiving a remark or complaint.

The private education union Sindicato Nacional de Trabajadores de la Enseñanza Privada denounced a series of anti-union dismissals at various private schools, including Elbio Fernández, Cervantes and Sagrada Familia. These three institutions dismissed several trade union representatives and, in one case, dismissed a person who had previously denounced the school for anti-union persecution.

In December 2011, the Sindicato Médico del Uruguay (SMU) announced a series of stoppages in the public and private health sector. The workers were demanding the fulfilment of the collective agreements signed in 2009, as well as fair and decent hours and pay conditions for the welfare of the patients in their care.

In November 2011, metal workers affiliated to UNTMRA held a 25-day strike strike The most common form of industrial action, a strike is a concerted stoppage of work by employees for a limited period of time. Can assume a wide variety of forms.

See general strike, intermittent strike, rotating strike, sit-down strike, sympathy strike, wildcat strike in response to their employers’ refusal to engage in collective bargaining collective bargaining The process of negotiating mutually acceptable terms and conditions of employment as well as regulating industrial relations between one or more workers’ representatives, trade unions, or trade union centres on the one hand and an employer, a group of employers or one or more employers’ organisations on the other.

See collective bargaining agreement
negotiations, called for 10 months before, within the framework of the Wage Councils, a bargaining mechanism whereby workers and employers agree on progressive pay adjustments in a specific branch of activity over a given period of time. The action succeeded in pressing the companies to negotiate with the union.

Between August and October 2011, public banking workers affiliated to the AEBU and private banking workers staged a series of stoppages to press for collective bargaining collective bargaining The process of negotiating mutually acceptable terms and conditions of employment as well as regulating industrial relations between one or more workers’ representatives, trade unions, or trade union centres on the one hand and an employer, a group of employers or one or more employers’ organisations on the other.

See collective bargaining agreement
on labour conditions. The process had been blocked since December 2010. The collective action finally succeeded in obliging the banking sector to engage in negotiations and to examine the union demands.

In October 2011, workers at Hospital Evangélico affiliated to the Federación Uruguaya de la Salud (FUS) decided to hold a 24-hour sit-in at the hospital in support of their demand for the negotiation of a collective agreement, which the administration was firmly refusing to discuss. The workers returned to work pending the definitive resolution of their demands regarding decent working conditions.