To the Board of Directors
Care of the president
Dear Brother/ Sister,
The
Confederação Nacional dos Trabalhadores nas Indústrias de Alimentação e Afins-CNTA Afins (Food Industry and Allied Workers’ National Confederation-CNTA Afins-Brazil), represented by its delegation at the Third IUF Global Dairy Conference, hereby expresses its view about the event, as follows:
Firstly, we would like to thank IUF for the invitation and to congratulate its board of directors as well as all the support staff of Atilra for offering us such a significant event, so perfectly organized. We cannot fail to acknowledge the greatness and beneficial construction of Atilra’s Technology Education Center. Congratulations and thank you for the hospitality and attention.
Now, in reference to the Conference, please let us express our view of it:
We listened carefully to the representatives of all the countries and we noticed that, with the exception of the representatives of specific entities of the dairy division, all the ones who have spoken out did not limit themselves to the dairy division issues but mentioned problems in other sectors within their representations as well.
We also observed that the difficulties presented by the entities of all countries do not differ in their essence, except for the languages used and for the way they are manifested, that is peculiar to each case.
Thus, it is easy to come to conclude that the capitalism that exploits workers in Latin America is the same one that exploits those in Europe and in the entire world. The difference resides in the power to resist of each trade union entity.
Whenever the capitalist system enters into crisis, we start thinking it is coming to its end, but that is pure illusion: its holders are already preparing new strategies to be applied with the aim of accumulating more wealth at the expense of the working class.
Equally, we had the chance to listen to a Danone representative who showed us, through a brilliant speech, his depth knowledge of the sector while making it clear for us Danone Group’s strategy, which does not differ from that of large corporate groups. Their goal is to sell the idea that companies have been doing their best to respond satisfactorily to the demands of workers, be it economically or socially.
But you see, it seems that virtually all the large groups representatives, when giving a speech to unions officials, generally don’t mention profits but rather cite the efforts they have been putting into implementing policies to ensure workers the paying of good wages, decent working conditions, safety and health.
So, what is the best way we have to combat the exploitation that capitalism, by making use of more and more new strategies, has been taking advantage of the working class? We believe that the resolution adopted at the Conference is very valuable, however we won’t reach our objective if we don’t globalize the union struggle, under great integration and through various means, including the Internet.
We must strengthen those entities that have been unable to resist exploitation of large corporate groups by taking action and demanding large corporate groups representatives to negotiate main topics with trade union leaders trained by union entities of all levels within the sector or occupational category. We also believe that we could publish newspapers to be delivered to workers, containing messages of solidarity and support to their struggle in pursuit of their goals, in the language of each country and translation into the language of the country receiving the support.
It is our view that this struggle needs to involve the participation of unions, federations and confederation in each country, regionally under the international coordination of IUF regional offices and globally under the international coordination of IUF main office.
Comrades, since we don’t hold the truth, these suggestions are not intended to be the only ones but we would like to open a debate of ideas in order to strengthen the Food working class representatives of all the countries so we can respond as the workers deserve.
Yours in solidarity,
Artur Bueno de Camargo
President
