Chile: School Food Workers End Strike
School Lunch, July 2024 Photo: @dialogosur
July 24, 2024 Hour: 6:09 pm
Education Minister Nicolás Cataldo said Wednesday that after an arduous day of negotiations it was agreed to pay them their benefits by August at the latest.
On Wednesday, women food preparation workers in Chile’s school system began returning to work after reaching an agreement on the payment of past-due benefits.
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Last February, the company Las Lagunas stopped providing services to the Junta Nacional de Auxilio Escolar y Becas (Junaeb) and dismissed more than 4,500 employees, who were in charge of preparing snacks and meals for the students.
All of them were hired by another company to do the same work, and Las Lagunas undertook to pay them their severance in two parts, the first in March, which was fulfilled, and the other in July, which is still pending.
Faced with difficulties in obtaining these resources, equivalent to some 1,600 dollars, they began a work stoppage and the day before they marched along Avenida de La Alameda, which passed in front of the Palacio de La Moneda and ended at the Junaeb.
Education Minister Nicolás Cataldo said Wednesday that after an arduous day of negotiations it was agreed to pay them their benefits by August at the latest.
The funds, he said, will come out of the guarantee deposit made by the company when it received the concession.
After regretting what happened, the official pointed out that measures are being taken in order to avoid this type of problem in the future.
“Today, there are eight companies providing school meals in the same territory where before there was only one,” Cataldo explained.
He added the willingness to modernise the functioning of Junaeb, an entity created 60 years ago and in need of a structural and legislative update.
Chile’s School Feeding Programme provides breakfast, lunch, snacks and dinner, as appropriate, to socially, economically, psychologically or biologically disadvantaged students during the school year and nationwide.
Autor: OSG
Fuente: The Independent-DW
