MASSIVE LAYOFFS IN LEAR AND DONNELLEY
National and provincial deputies demand an emergency meeting with the US embassy
04/07/2014
National and provincial senators and deputies from various parties formally requested a meeting with the US ambassador in Argentina Kevin Sullivan. They want to discuss the serious situation affecting the employees of the North American multinational companies Lear and Donelley.
With their request they included the different bills that have been submitted in the National Chamber of Deputies and in the Buenos Aires provincial legislature in which the legislators express their concern over the massive layoffs that these companies are carrying out in their factories in Buenos Aires’ Northern suburbs.
Lear and Donnelley are two North American companies that can’t claim to be in any kind of crisis. Lear earned $16 billion in 2013; Donelley is the biggest printing company worldwide and it reports multi-million dollar profits globally.
In their letter requestig a meeting with the US embassy, the legislators pointed out that the “Lear Corporation has the only factory that produces one autopart in Argentina needed by the local Ford factory. The legislators also noted that the Labor Ministry already found the previuos paid fourloughs of 330 workers in their Pacheco plant illegal because the company failed to submit a finantial distress claim to the ministry before proceding with the suspentions of almost half of the plant’s workers. Later the company kept 200 workers on unpaid leave and went on to fire 100. Regarding the printing company Donneley Argentina S.A. , it is alarming the company’s intention to fire 123 workers after claiming finantial distress, although it pays the lowest salaries in the sector and it has reported huge profits worldwide in 2013”.
The group of legislators had also expressed their concern with the company preventing elected file-and-rank union representatives from entering their work places.
The meeting with the U.S. ambassador was requested by the deputies Nicolás del Caño, Claudio Lozano, Victor de Gennaro, Omar Duclos, Oscar Martínez, Alcira Argumedo, Antonio Riestra, Victoria Donda and the national senator Norma Morandini, Buenos Aires City legistators Pablo Ferreyra and Alejandro Bodart, Buenos Aires province legislators Christian Castillo and Mendoza’s senator and legislators Noelia Barbeito, Héctor Fresina and Cecilia Soria.
