They demanded an unwaivable holiday for the elections

The request was made by a group of legislators and aims to restore a right of workers across the country.

Santiago. 15/7/2024A group of legislators raised the need to maintain the non-waivable holiday on election days, for the benefit of workers throughout the country.

This benefit for trade workers existed in our country until 2007, when the article was removed and voting time was limited to a period of 2 to 3 hours.

Deputies Juan Santana (PS), Luis Cuello (PC), Camila Musante (IND-PPD), Andrés Giordano (FA), together with the leaders of Conatracops, the Confederation of Workers of Commerce, Services and Casinos met with the Minister of the Segpres to make the formal request for the indication, which they hope will be added to the presidential veto that the Executive will present.

“We have come today because we are concerned about a motion that was presented by opposition senators and that was unfortunately approved, which mainly suppresses the right to legal holidays that cannot be waived by thousands of workers in our country, which we believe constitutes a tremendous detriment to the task, to the work that the State has to effectively encourage and guarantee the participation of people in these elections. We hope that this will allow us not to go backwards in a right that workers have rightly won through their struggles, through their banners, and that allows all people in our country to go and vote peacefully,” said Juan Santana (PS), member of the Labor Commission of the Chamber.

Congressional representatives have shown their support for the presidential veto, emphasizing the importance of maintaining the sanction and the mandatory vote, with an amount that does not exceed 2 UTM.

On the other hand, the president of the Labor Commission, Deputy Luis Cuello (PC) commented: “We have also stated that this project, this norm has many flaws of unconstitutionality, but the most important thing is that it affects a principle which is the principle of non-regression, the principle of progressiveness of social rights and therefore we think it is important that the government addresses this concern that we have expressed and the minister has committed to studying our request to incorporate it in the veto.”

Mauricio Acevedo, leader of the Alliance of Trade Workers and Conatra-Cops, of the Confederation of Trade, said that “this is a tremendous blow to the democracy of our country, a blow to the family of trade, who are witnesses of how our right to go and vote is being violated, a right so republican won in democracy, that workers have even allowed us to organize ourselves with our families to be able to go and vote. When in the country what is sought is to advance in rights, here what we are seeing is a regression in labor rights, won, I repeat, in democracy. A right that we workers have worked so hard to conquer, today unfortunately a sector of politics that wrote with the hand is erasing with the elbow.”

If the discussion cannot move forward in correcting this violation of a labour right, the parliamentarians will turn to the Constitutional Court, referring to the principle of non-regression that is violated according to the current provision.

“The harsh reality is that workers cannot travel from their workplaces to their voting stations in three hours, especially in regions like this one, the metropolitan area, where public transport and transportation take much more than three hours from one end to the other on election days. So hopefully this can be fixed, because if not, we will not be able to celebrate the holiday of democracy without the workers of commerce,” said deputy Camila Musante (IND-PPD).

The bill allowing elections in two days was approved last week in Congress. During the same day, Elizalde announced the presidential veto that must be entered within the next few days.

“Regardless of the position held on compulsory voting or fines, it is true that Chile is moving decisively towards building an institutional framework that facilitates compulsory voting with automatic registration. But it cannot be that workers lose rights that have been achieved through tripartism, collective bargaining and that have been included in our current legislation. It does not seem reasonable that some opposition parliamentarians have literally been smart and have tried to incorporate norms that, precisely, violate the principle of non-regression of social rights and, in particular, of labor rights,” concluded deputy Andres Giordano (FA).