A commitment to education is a pledge to the future
With Siderlei de Oliveira
EAtilra’s Technology Education Center:
a great example for all
a great example for all
A commitment to education is a pledge to the future
Photo: Nelson Godoy
La Rel interviewed CONTAC’s President Siderlei de Oliveira, who was part of the last International Conference of the Dairy Sector and pointed out the significance of Atilra’s decision to open the Technology Education Center (CET).
-What is your opinion about the 3rd Conference?
-Overall guidelines remain much the same from one Conference to the next. What do change are the stories and the realities of each union.
In this case, something to point out was the fact that the workers’ movement in capable of something as great as this Technology Education Center built by Atilra.
It was the result of the action undertaken by a Union that besides pursuing better salaries and working conditions also takes the time to train workers to enable them a better future. It is a great example for all.
-An action oriented at the future…
-Indeed, but also a Union that is well aware of what must be done these days in order to continue growing from the labor union and political perspectives.
During the period of the military dictatorship, we learnt that union organizations must necessarily be rooted in society and depend on the organization of other groups, aiming at the coordination of all progressive forces in order to recover democracy.
Then came a period where unions dealt with an agenda that is more specific, with a more inward activity, and consequently growing further from the problems of society in general.
As its General Secretary Héctor Ponce has stated, Atilra aims at becoming an organization that in addition to protecting and defending workers from the dairy industry, will also relate to the struggles, conflicts and dreams, as he likes to express it, of the whole community.
In that sense, I am convinced that, all of us who took part in this have learned a very important lesson.