Politicians try to establish obligatory worker unionization
A group of elected Representatives of Chile’s Senate recently proposed a constitutional reform that would obligate workers to join the corresponding labour union, in the case that one or more exists to choose from, upon signing a work contract with a company. The proposal led by Representatives Gabriel Ascencio, Marco Enríquez–Ominami y Álvaro Escobar, is an effort to promote stronger and better workers’ unions throughout the country. “For the past twenty years there has been a very low rate of unionization in Chile, with barely 12.2% of the total 6 million workers existing today,” states Gabriel Asencio in a report published in El Mostrador. “We believe our proposal will help the majority of workers that do not join their corresponding union due to fear, lack of information, or simply lack of time. It is also a strong signal from the State to support unionization,” adds Marco Enríquez-Ominami. Union leaders in Chile’s salmon industry however do not applaud the proposal, where unions (and union leaders) are numerous. Some of the problems with current legal situation with unions are that the established unions want to keep the limited power they have, whilst other ambitious workers sometimes try their hand at forming a new union; and yet all of these “mini-unions” want to have their independence, they also want to join together as a collective during negotiation time with the company. It will be interesting to see if this recent proposal will actually promote mini-union merges and the advancement of workers’ unionization in Chile.
