Transport workers withdraw from unemployment and accuse companies of exploiting their demands

The Government is going through a key week for different reasons: the kidnapping of the former lieutenant of Venezuela, the beginning of the dialogue for tax reform, the reconstruction of the Valparaíso Region and the security cabinet on Thursday. Out of all this, there is one point that must be addressed urgently: the strike announced by the National Confederation of Major and Minor Transport (Confenared) for the “super Monday” of March 4. No one with a minimum of knowledge of the risks involved in governing is unaware that starting the work and school year with a transportation strike is not starting off on the left foot, but starting off without feet.

With full awareness of this, Luis Campos, leader of Confenared, announced that the “Super Monday” strike was due to the fact that the Government had cut off the dialogue tables when the union demanded an improvement in hygienic and safety conditions for carriers.

With the intention of putting a stop to any risk that implies that this March 4th begins with bus stops full and people losing patience as they cannot arrive in a timely manner to their jobs and schools, or to their homes when the day begins to end. , a meeting will be held this Thursday at the Ministry of Transportation to address the demands and deactivate the mobilization.

Regarding the fact that the dialogue would have been cut off, lThe director of Metropolitan Public Transportation, Paola Tapia, was quick to deny said information. ANDn conversation with ADN, denied Campos and maintained that “we are in constant dialogue with the drivers’ unions. What do we reinforce? “That the Ministry of Transportation has never closed a door, a table has never been closed.”

He even assured that “in recent weeks alone we have met two or three times. Therefore, this dialogue subsists and is present, there are historical demands that have been raised and from which “We are taking charge.”he pointed .

In fact, Paola Tapia reported that the conversations have borne fruit and that “we hope to soon give clearer signals in the sense that “We are going to have all public transportation on Monday.”.

The counter The Ministry of Transport was contacted, from where they also ruled out that communication with the unions had been broken. “As a Government, and especially through the Directorate of Metropolitan Public Transport, we have always spoken with the drivers of the system to address, together, the improvements that are required.”

As an example, they assured that in July 2023 they created a safety table for the department and representatives of the drivers, “a work that allowed the drivers themselves to identify critical points in the city, defining priority areas where, through the Undersecretary of Crime Prevention, the Carabineros were appointed to strengthen preventive patrols.”

Regarding the strike, they stated that “the dialogue is open with all drivers, we maintain daily conversations with them, because our priority is to ensure that users of the system have safe and efficient transportation, particularly in March, which is when the city “returns to normal activity after the vacation period.”

Now, faced with the dilemma of facing a strike next Monday after the failure of the talks this week, the Government calculates that adhering to the mobilization “shouldn’t exceed 30%taking into consideration all those companies that have been demonstrating through their unions.”

Even though that is the percentage, for ehe academic at the Faculty of Government of the University of Chile and vice president of the Global Americans study center in Washington, Robert Funk, if the strike were to go ahead, the scenario would be very complex for the Executive, since this would crown a very intense summer for the Government, in that “management issues regarding fires in the Valparaíso Region continue to be questioned; It becomes evident that the legislative year also begins with the wind against us,” he maintains. That, thinking that “the Government hoped to be able to advance its legislative agenda, including the issue of pensions.”

Luis Campos and the ghost unemployment

Campos is an emblematic leader of the Confenared and a controversial character within the transport union. In 2014 he appeared in a “Contact” report by Canal 13, where he was linked to a corruption network that committed irregularities within the Transantiago company. Nicknamed “Pescao”, Campos was accused of being responsible for the bad practices of operators within the organization and of retaining all union money.

Even though today he is the spokesperson for Senapred, different unions of Network workers distance themselves from the call for a strike and assure that this is not representative of the entire transportation sector, but exclusively of those who represent a part of the property. In this sense, they accuse that Campos has instrumentalized the genuine demands of the sector, such as safety and hygiene, to hide his own interests.

To understand the problem, it is necessary to clarify that the companies in charge of the transportation service are not going through a good financial moment, as published Pulse on Sunday, February 25.

In summary, today there are seven companies that are going through an “operational deficit”, that is, they are not able to cover their current expenses, to the point that they have warned the Ministry of Transportation that they could request a judicial reorganization in the coming months. In other words, declare bankruptcy.

The call for strike occurs in this context and, according to at least five unions, Campos launched this offensive to pressure the Government and thus reach an alternative solution to the financial problem.

Giovanni Barrueto, who is president of the San José union and the National Federation of Public Transport, as well as part of the National Board and the Interunion of Public Transport, advances that they do not support the strike and accuses that Luis Campos does not have the legitimacy to take office. the representation of workers.

“Today this character proclaims himself a representative of the workers, but he is an advisor to the Red Urban company, STP, STU and Metropol, as well as training manager of the STP company.” In other words, “he represents the workers, but he is also their manager,” he remarks.

For his part, Sebastián Jorquera, secretary of the inter-company union STV-STP, explains that they will not join the strike either “because the workers here are not going to win anything.” Jorquera assures that the strike “is disguised by hygiene and safety, which turns out to be due to the new tenders and fixing the old tenders”, regarding the economic crisis in which the companies would find themselves.

“Campos is being a representative of the workers when the workers do not know him and those who do know him hate him, because they know that he has been carrying out these false strikes, the phantom strikes, for many more years.” The unionist summarizes by pointing out that Campos is “the one who gives the disease, but also the solution.”

Currently Luis Campos directs Confenared and Confenataxi. This last union, which had warned that it would join the strike on Monday, gave up on it during the day on Tuesday.