Villa Nueva is a city located in the department of General San Martín, in the Argentine central province of Córdoba. There is a Nestlé plant there where things have not been going well for some years now

In 2016, we paid our first visit to Fernando Marín Páez, general secretary of the Union of Food Industry Workers of Villa Nueva (STIA). The title of the article we published then—“Nestlé’s contradictory discourse. Investments and layoffs”— reflected the situation at the plant that year.

Since then, Nestlé’s local management maintains a confrontational stance toward the union and is currently cutting down the number of workers on the payroll, with the latest round of layoffs occurring on March 13 of this year, when 18 workers were fired.

But the worst was still to come. The day after the layoffs, the plant’s general manager, Juan Pablo Bonomini, addressed the workers at the unit’s lot to warn them that disagreeing with company policy would have consequences. “Anyone who does not fall in line is out the door; and I will not hesitate even if it’s someone with great seniority,” he stressed.

The union immediately issued a statement rejecting his sayings as “completely unacceptable. Not only do they contribute nothing to the construction of social harmony in the workplace, they foster division, unease, and humiliation”.

“We categorically demand that the authorities of Nestlé Argentina,” the statement continued, “do whatever it takes to immediately reverse this contemptuous attitude toward its employees, which entails treating them as an absolutist employer, with no respect or humanity. These types of authoritarian and destructive practices not only violate the workers’ fundamental rights, they also generate an unbearable hostile environment”.

On Thursday, May 8, we held a virtual meeting, with the participation of Héctor Morcillo, general secretary of Argentina’s Federation of Food Industry Workers (FTIA), Fernando Marín Páez, Antonio Vitor, president of the Latin American Federation of Nestlé Workers (FELATRAN), and myself, in which it was decided that this case will be discussed at the next meeting between the IUF and Nestlé, in Vevey, Switzerland.