Argentina - April 2018

From the workers of Arcelor Mittal (Acindar)

Dear comrades of the NUMSA of South Africa

From one of the largest steel factories in Argentina, Acindar - Arcelor Mittal, we send you our solidarity and support to your struggle against the same transnational corporation that exploits us and thousands of workers across the borders. We welcome the correctness of your demands of the outsourced workers to become full contracted workers of the permanent staff and to have decent wages and decent working conditions, Long live the strike of our brothers of Arcelor Mittal! Your struggle is our struggle!

We produce in terrible working conditions, with our lives threatened at all times, with wages that are not enough to cover the cost of the typical shopping basket, and they want to apply labor flexibilization, so that we work as slaves. Also, here, the workers of the contractor companies (outsourced) are treated as second-hand workers and their wages are lower than those of the permanent workers. The metalworkers of Argentina have also suffered tens of thousands of dismissals and factory closures and workshops shutting down over the past years. All this with the union bureaucracy of the UOM -Metalworkers Union- looking the other way and maintaining the division of workers sector by sector, factory by factory. We understand your demands, which are the same as ours, and we also have the same enemy to confront.

That is why from this militant group of metalworkers, we will make your struggle known and we will promote it so that factories, internal commissions, etc., pronounce themselves in support of the struggle that you are carrying out. We the workers of Acindar -Arcelor Mittal- of Argentina believe that we cannot keep fighting divided but we need to fight united acorss the borders. For that, we need to get rid of the treacherous leaderships that divide us, strike as a single fist and twist the arm of this employers to get decent wages and working conditions, for all outsourced workers to be in full contract, for the reduction of the hours in the shift without wage reduction, so that the unemployed enter to work. Enough of first and second class workers! We are all metalworkers! Equal pay for equal work! Arcelor Mittal has got super-profits and condemns the workers to misery. This must end! One single class, one single international struggle!