Argentina
05/31/2013
We reproduce below an interview to Rubén Matu, delegate from the LEAR factory, where the workers came out to fight for their demands against the bosses of this US auto-part factory (provider of the trans-national company FORD), who fired 15 colleagues.
The workers were able, against the SMATA bureaucracy and the traps of the Ministry of Labour, to beat the bosses and impose all their claims. Seeking solidarity and coordination with other factories, uniting all the plant workers and distrusting all the judgments from the Ministry of Labour.
“(…) the defense of the comrades from Las Heras has to be a central issue, not only of the workers from LEAR but also of all the workers that claim to be anti-bureaucratic and anti-bosses”.
DO (*Democracia Obrera, Workers’ Democracy): Here we are with the comrade Rubén Matu, delegate from LEAR, who is going to tell us: how was your struggle?
RM: Well, I am a delegate of the internal commission. My name is Rubén Matu. On April 10th we held and assembly with near 400 comrades where we decided to demand a bonus of 100 hours, the increase of the travel allowance to a minimum of 3 pesos per ticket, the be full timer of all the hired comrades, a re-categorization and better work conditions, including security and hygienic. The assembly votes to carry out work-to-rule. The following day we trip into 15 dismissals. That day we continued working to rule, because we were stopping the factory for breach of contract and we gave an important fight where the comrades blocked the gates, etc.
DO: How many days were you in struggle, and how was it?
RM: We were almost a month. There was removal of collaboration, work to rule, that in fact was a strike, until the mandatory conciliation was dictated. What we did, knowing the role played by the union, the ministry and the company which wanted to know nothing about reinstating our comrades or grant us the demands that we were claiming for, was to keep blocking the gates (which had already been standing for three days) because we didn’t trust the ministry.
DO: Tell us, how was that you decided to face the mandatory conciliation?
RM: We wanted to add a section when the union, the ministry and the company refused to do so, we considered that they didn’t guarantee the reinstatement of our colleagues. That’s why we didn’t stop our actions, until the last comrade was inside and until we knew that they would continue on their jobs.
Once the colleagues entered and started doing their regular tasks as the day before they were fired, only then we lifted the blockade.
Then, for as long as the conciliation lasted we went out to seek the solidarity of different sectors of the working class, where students, workers from other factories and several human rights organisms participated. We carried out actions in which we appeared in the media blocking routes, or intending to do so. We couldn’t block the Pan-American rout, as it was defined in the assembly, for the known policy of the government; at the attempt of blocking it they sent 500 gendarmes. There it is clear that what the state and the government only do is to defend the interests of the companies against the workers.
DO: The same government that today wants to imprison the Las Heras oil workers that will be brought to trial this June 17th. How do you think that the defense or the comrades has to be carried out?
RM: We can allow no attack to any workers’ organization. If they touch one of us they touch us all. In the same way in which we received the solidarity of different sectors, I think that the defense of the workers from Las Heras has to be the first issue.
DO: The national Committee that was set up with the comrades from the Garrahan hospital, the 60 Line, Paty, teachers and other organizations are promoting the setting up of committees in every factory, college, school and establishments: do you think it is possible to promote in your factory, with you from the internal commission, the setting up of a committee in defense of the comrades from Las Heras?
RM: I think that it’s something that has to be taken to the assembly. Those are discussions that have to be carried with the workers. My opinion is that the defense of the comrades from Las Heras has to be a crucial issue, not only of the workers from LEAR but also of all the workers that claim to be anti-bureaucratic and anti-bosses.
DO: That’s right; the defense of the workers from Las Heras has to be taken by the entire workers’ movement. Is there anything else that you wish to tell the workers, the students?
RM: That the only way in which we can be better, to be able to get better life and work conditions, is the organization of the workers. An independent organization where the most important things are the assemblies and the mandate is respected. And I think that the demands and claims of all the workers, those who work legally as much as those who work illegally, the outsourced, the hired, the unemployed and the ones who are prosecuted for fighting, have to be taken based on this.
DO: We think that the result of the trial upon the workers from Las Heras will set a before and an after for the entire workers’ movement and above all for the ones that are prosecuted. How do you see this?
RM: We feel that if they pass this attack, as you say, they will be coming for the rest of us. If we don’t face, if we don’t fight against each attack that the bosses pass, we will be in worst conditions for the following one.
DO: It would be very important that as a result of the fight that you give in the assembly the workers from LEAR take into their hands the defense of the oil workers from Las Heras.
RM: Yes, certainly. We have been doing an experience, we are a body of delegates that recently gave a great fight with the factory workers and who receive all the support and solidarity from different workers’ organizations, which allowed us to carry with this struggle. But we think that isn’t enough, we can’t remain still but instead we have to take in all the demands to be in better conditions to fight.
