On Wednesday the 17th, an event as strange as it was worrying occurred at the Ministry of Labor. The workers of Lácteos Vidal have been carrying out a conflict over labor demands for several weeks now: there were strikes, mandatory conciliation, expiration of the same without results and the return of the strikes. The labor portfolio summoned both parties: representatives of Atilra, the milk industry workers’ union, attended for the union, and one of its historical lawyers for the company. But before starting the act, the company’s lawyer announced that he did not have a mandate from the company to negotiate in this conflict, but that he would be replaced by lawyers from the MEAB, the anti-blockade business movement. The Ministry official asked him to identify who it was, what legal nature this movement had that would assume the role of negotiator for the company, and asked the lawyer for Lácteos Vidal to record these circumstances in the minutes. The lawyer asked permission to see if that was possible and left as if to make a telephone consultation. But he never returned to the audience.
MEAB background
The anti-blockade business movement recognizes as a precedent a conflict between the Razzini Materials company, from Rosario, and the Truckers’ union, in a dispute over the classification of the former’s drivers in 2020. Verónica Razzini, head of the family business , denounced threats, blockade of the plant and the absence of municipal and provincial authorities to put the conflict on track. He fired some 20 workers whom he accused of blocking, and managed to get a judge to deny the dismissed an amparo action, and then a judge to order the arrest of 13 dismissed workers who maintained the protest in front of the doors of the plant.
From there, Verónica Razzini was contacted by the PRO’s Santa Fe lawyer, Florencia Arietto, who from presenting herself as a “left-wing Peronist” turned in just three years (from 2017 to 2020) to become a close confidant of Patricia Bullrich, passing by the Renovating Front of Sergio Massa and the Civic Coalition of Elisa Carrió.
Opportunist and media, Arietto proposed to Razzini to create a business movement headed by women, which would come out to confront the “union gangs that prevent the work of SMEs.” They added the “anti-blockade” formula to the movement and began to proclaim slogans such as “we are not afraid of them” and “together we can defeat the union mafias.” Quickly, the idea of the specialist in media shows Arietto received the public support of Patricia Bullrich and Mauricio Macri.
Truck drivers, enemy No. 1
It didn’t take long for the MEAB to turn Pablo and Hugo Moyano’s truck drivers’ union into its main enemy. And it received its most convincing blow when, in April of this year, it managed to provoke the arrest of two truck drivers, Maximiliano Cabaleyro and Fernando Espíndola, “for the blockade” of the company Rey Distribución, in San Pedro, in conflict over the dismissal of two workers. The union denounced on the occasion the media handling of the conflict to show what a union dispute was like “extortion”.
In the last year, the MEAB has been expanding its media insertion through its intervention in conflicts, in which it offers the business side, generally in medium-sized companies, legal advice and public dissemination. Juan Beluardo is one of the lawyers who usually provides services in the conflicts in which MEAB intervenes. he is not a labor lawyer, but a specialist in criminal law, with which the orientation to which the intervention points appears clear. In his twitter account he presents himself as a member of the “Pato Bullrich and Garro team”, the current mayor of La Plata (Together for Change).
The stigmatization of forceful measures as “extortion” and of union organization as “mafia” and “patota” is their leitmotiv, their preferred rhetoric. Thus, he has already intervened in conflicts that involved the Uocra, oil companies, chemicals and the current one, of Lácteos Vidal in Carlos Casares, is not the first in the sector.
in the dairy sector
A year ago, the MEAB actively intervened in the conflict of Lácteos Mayol, in Cañuelas, where “the triumph” of having “overcome the blockade” that was not such, was celebrated even with the physical presence of Patricia Bullrich.
The anti-blockade business movement also broke out there, which, to justify its reason for being, denounced blockades that prevented entry. As in the case of Vidal, he criminally denounced the workers before the Justice. “They sent a prosecutor with the last name Pippo, there were no blockades, but he had them put the cars inside the plant to directors, hierarchical and anyone who would lend himself to the maneuver, he closed the gate and drew up the act of denouncing the blockade to free movement of automobiles and people,” he told Page 12 Heber Rios, from Atilra.
Now, at Lácteos Vidal, the MEAB denounced “the blocking of entry to those who want to go to work.” Florencia Arietto stated on social networks “Dácteos Vidal resists, they are not alone: the anti-blockade business movement is already intervening.” And they intervene by exhibiting in the media the businessmen supposedly victims of union extortion. They broadcast film material to “witness” the threats and the blockade. But in Moctezuma, the town in the Carlos Casares district where the Lácteos Vidal processing plant is set up, they did not get any of that.
They denounced that the union had set up a tent at the entrance of the plant to block the entry of workers and trucks, but the tent is almost a hundred meters from the entrance and its purpose is to camp workers and their representatives while waiting for a response. .
The MeAB circulated a video showing militants wearing Atilra vests trying to stop the march of an employee trying to enter his work to explain the reasons for the measure, undoubtedly seeking their solidarity. The young worker refuses and tries to continue. There is no violence or threats towards the employee. And furthermore, the place is not the entrance to the plant in Moctezuma, but an episode that apparently would have happened in the warehouses that the company owns in Greater Buenos Aires, where there is no conflict.
However, MeAB filmed everything that is reported here and posted it on its twitter account on Wednesday the 17th with the caption: “This is how the Atilra union mafia harasses employees who want to start working at Lácteos Vidal.”
The owner
Alejandra Bada Vázquez, a direct descendant of the founder, is the current owner of Lácteos Vidal. The MeAB presents her as “the representative of the family business that is the victim of Atilra’s criminal action, which prevents workers from entering and has stopped the plant for a month.” Alejandra enters and leaves the plant when she wants, talks and sometimes argues with the leaders of the union at the door of the plant. She listens to claims that it is illegal for her to hire six workers who perform tasks provided for in the agreement, but she does not recognize them as plant personnel and pays them as monotributistas.
Another 20 workers perform tasks that correspond to higher categories than those recognized by the company. In total, 26 workers with whom the recognition of their working conditions is breached, in a plant with 46 employees. Alejandra listens to them, interrupts with a comment, there is a respectful exchange, and in the end, she expresses her reasons with conviction: “I am free to hire whoever I want and how I want, why can’t I do it?”
The answer to Alejandra’s question was given by the Ministry of Labor, which has already ruled in favor of the claim of irregularity in hiring. As well, a prosecutor has already ruled that there are no blockades. It is the workers who, in a large majority, decided to continue the strike and remain in the camp. In this sense, the Vidal workers had better luck than their colleagues at Lácteos Mayol in the conflict a year ago.
Alejandra Bada Vázquez walks through the facilities. She is accompanied by the camera team sent by the MeAB to denounce how the person responsible for the family business lives this situation of “union bullying”. A few meters from her, striking workers and union leaders look at her without intervening. She poses in front of the cameras, shows the facilities, recounts the events in her own way. Whoever is filming stops the camera, now her assistant approaches Alejandra and gives her an indication. The workers who are seeing the scene think they understand what it is about, with the little they have heard. Which is verified a few seconds later when, from behind the camera, they order Alejandra: “Now cry.”