Marine Harvest closes plant sooner than promised
The busloads of 350 workers arrived to the Marine Harvest plant Chinquihue at 0:00 hours on Saturday, to start their shift as usual. However this time the buses stayed on the premises, and instead of heading directly to the locker rooms the workers were called into a meeting; where the human resources manager of the plant announced that the plant has officially closed, began handing out layoff notices in alphabetical order, and the workers were loaded back on the buses and sent home, for good. Then at 08:00 hours, in came the busloads of another 350 workers. Surprised to not see the line up of night shift workers waiting for the bus, they were also taken through the same procedure and sent home with their respective envelopes. A shock for all those involved, and those who spoke up the most were the series of politicians involved in the “Marine Harvest situation” since the company’s gradual economic downfall, due to principally to ISA (infectious salmon anemia). City Mayor Rabindranath Quinteros was indignant since the last announcement made by Marine Harvest was that they would close the plant in July (See 22.02.08 - Marine Harvest cuts 1,500 jobs in Chile). “The company acted unilaterally, hid its true intentions and seized the moment to lay-off over 600 workers from one day to the next. Where there is lack of truth there is lack of trust, and I have lost my trust in Marine Harvest,” states Quinteros in the Llanquihue. Vilma Cavieres, Director of Human Resources of Marine Harvest Chile responded, “What I had most wished for was to pay the workers’ salaries until June, but I’m afraid we were not able to frankly and clearly explain to the workers beforehand that we just can’t. It is impossible to increase the company’s economic offer.”
